Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin are touring around with their latest documentary “Undefeated”. It just had a run at the DOC NYC festival at the IFC Center where they won a special jury prize. Earlier this year, they debuted at SXSW and picked up distribution through the Weinstein Company. Since then, they’ve been going from festival to festival picking up awards.
The film follows a North Memphis high school football team through a season. The filmmakers follow the students and coaches - each a great character and story in their own right. It may be unfair to describe it this way, but it’s sort of “Friday Night Lights” (the documentary) meets “The Blind Side” in the best possible ways. T.J. and Dan moved down to Memphis for 9 months to make the film and managed to blend in and captured some incredibly candid behavior from the students on film (which would seem to be a fairly impossible feat around high school kids). The film manages to be incredibly emotional without becoming saccharine. Coach Bill Courtney delivers a series of speeches to his team throughout the film that were so good that they could have been scripted, but weren’t.
The wide release of the film nn February 10th is going to start in 15 major markets, which is an incredible release for a documentary, but it is well deserved. Even if you don’t like football, this film is well worth a watch. The filmmakers are now in Denver at the Starz film festival.
I don’t know if Undefeated is eligible for awards season this year, or if it will have to wait until next year, but I can’t imagine that they won’t pick up some nomiations (if not the awards themselves).
