Writer-director Storm Saulter’s coming-of-age sports drama Sprinter won Best Feature Film, Best Director, and the Audience Award at 2018’s American Black Film Festival, as well as Jury Winner for Best Narrative Feature at the 2019 Pan African Film Festival.
Sprinter tells the story of Akeem Sharp (played by Dale Elliott), a young Jamaican track and field athlete who must deal with the pressures of sudden fame and success when he begins to dominate the 200m and launches to glory as “The Rasta Rocket,” while struggling with the challenges presented by his sometimes-fractious family.
Saulter says he was always interested in creating a story that took place in the world of Jamaican track and field. “I’m also a cinematographer, and I’m a visual artist, so I tend to come from the visual side,” he says. “[Developing the story] started with the visual of this young man running through the cane fields. I kept thinking, okay… this keeps coming to me, and I need to work my way backward to it.”
“I started to write the story of this country boy who was a talented athlete, but his obstacles could not be black-and-white. They had to be more about family struggles; the dynamic between him, his siblings and his parents. I feel like, when people tell stories, especially about people of color, a lot of times the stakes have to be so extremely high; it’s a life or death thing. And I wanted to shift that paradigm, like: ‘How about if this kid just needs to make the team? What if he’s just going through some struggles that are more commonplace in families?’ A lot of us are dealing with obstacles that may not seem extreme, but they are just as powerful.”
Saulter wanted to tell a story about a modern Caribbean family “that was more nuanced and complex and didn’t rely on these stereotypes of who we think people are, or what we’re used to seeing.”
He also says the film has personal resonance. “At the heart of it, I wanted to tell the story of a boy that had lost his mom and was really missing her and really needing her, but if he could achieve something — win a race, make the team, etc. — he could get back to her. I had actually lost my mom and was dealing with those issues; trying to process that. So, I was really interested in developing a character that was going through something somewhat similar, but still had a chance to get back to their mom.”
The distractions created by Akeem’s family sometimes cause him to lose focus, and this becomes a theme in the film. “The thing with track is,” Saulter says, “it’s a physical game, but it’s also a serious mental game. So even though Akeem’s a super talented athlete, it’s only when he can really focus on what his goal is that he can really achieve it.” Though they go through rough patches, the Sharps remain a loving family. “I felt that it was really important to show the family kind of coming back together despite all of their issues. And though everyone seems to hit rock bottom, they all find each other in the end.”
Saulter says it took “maybe two to three-ish years” to write and develop the script. “I kept rewriting the first act.” But the project ultimately came together. “I connected with my producer, Rob Maylor, who had a similar vision of the type of story we were trying to tell. He was a big help in getting the final version of the script to where it needed to be. Rob’s company is Mental Telepathy Pictures, and his financier is Richard Jefferson, who’s an NBA veteran; really a great guy, supportive, and he saw the vision pretty early. He read the script, saw where it was going, and he believed in Rob and in me. He was the first person who got behind the film. Rob had also developed a relationship with Overbrook, Will [Smith] and Jada [Pinkett Smith]’s company. It was a perfect moment when the script was in the right place, and Will and Jada said, ‘Yeah, we want to do this.’”
Additional wind came to the project’s sails when Saulter was able to get eight-time Olympic track and field gold medalist Usain Bolt for a cameo scene. “I had spent years working on [Bolt’s] sets to the point where I started to direct a lot of the ads that he was in. I was able to ask him to do a cameo in the film, and he said yes. That really got people excited.”
But getting Usain Bolt came with its own set of challenges. “I literally got thirty minutes to achieve that scene. No joke. There were two commercial sets and my set, and he was being shuttled between all three of them. When he arrived on ours, we had to be ready and lit — everything. He comes on set and his rep goes, ‘Okay, you have thirty minutes.’ It was wild, trust me.”
“Meanwhile, it was our lead actor, Dale Elliott’s, first movie — and that was his first day on set. So on your first day on a movie set, you have to sit across from Bolt, and you have thirty minutes to nail it.”
Saulter realized the best approach would be to give Bolt a scene in which he breaks down his approach to winning 200m race. “It was very tactical in how I wrote his scene. I know I’m going to get the best out of him, the most energy, and the most truth if he really believes in what he’s saying and if he knows it intuitively. And I know for a fact that Bolt really loves the 200m. I’ve actually seen him speak about it before, so I know he has a technical way of breaking it down by every fifty meters. That’s how we got the material that really worked.”
More information about Sprinter can be found at www.sprinterthefilm.com.