{"id":57738,"date":"2025-09-11T17:20:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T17:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/57738\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T17:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T17:20:09","slug":"the-balloonists-about-daring-adventure-to-circle-globe-debuts-at-tiff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/57738\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Balloonists,’ About Daring Adventure To Circle Globe, Debuts At TIFF"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE:<\/strong> In 1991 a Swiss explorer and a British flying instructor attempted to do what had never been accomplished before: fly around the world nonstop in a balloon. They not only faced enormous technical challenges, and the risk of death, but competition in achieving the feat from billionaires and aeronauts.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story of Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones\u2019s valiant endeavor is told in The Balloonists<\/a>, which just made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. We have your first look at the documentary directed by John Dower in the clip above. It\u2019s a Rise Films production, presented by Anonymous Content and Red Bull Studios.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Bertrand<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBertrand Piccard and Brian Jones in the Breitling Orbiter III in Switzerland on February 9, 1999.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNicolas LE CORRE\/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen Rise Films first approached me with the story of Bertrand and Brian\u2019s journey, I had never heard of it but, coincidentally, was reading a book on grief in which there was an unexpected account of balloonists, Gaspard-Felix Tournachon who, in 1858, took the first ever photograph of the world from the sky,\u201d Dower writes in a director\u2019s statement. \u201cI was gripped by this story of an adventurer-slash-artist who enacts a cognitive change enabling us to look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his filmmaker\u2019s statement, Dower highlights a paradox about being selected to direct.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs someone with crippling vertigo and for whom ballooning meant something that happened at children\u2019s parties, the coincidence was simply too alluring,\u201d Dower writes. \u201cSo was Bertrand and Brian\u2019s story \u2013 on one level it is an extraordinary adventure story with high stakes and dramatic twists and turns. On another level, it is an unlikely buddy movie that develops as a special bond forms between the two men in such extreme circumstances. And here also is a level of cognitive change whereby the overall story enables the viewer to look at themselves and their place in the world through the extraordinary journey these two men undertook.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBertrand Piccard, Brian Jones in 1999 before taking off in record-breaking hot-air balloon flight.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tDower \u201ctaps into a rich archive that captures all the highs and lows on camera,\u201d TIFF<\/a>\u2019s chief documentary programmer Thom Powers writes in the festival program. \u201cVirgin mogul Richard Branson was among the highly publicized aeronauts to encounter successive failures. The perils were numerous: technical malfunctions, changing winds, severe storms, ice formation, and the threat of certain countries shooting down unauthorized aircrafts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPowers continues, \u201cBertrand partnered with the English pilot Brian Jones on the custom-built Breitling Orbiter 3\u2026 The defiance of the odds brings to mind the documentary Man on Wire. Even if you know the ending, it\u2019s white-knuckle suspense at every step.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the clip above, Piccard and Jones recall their feelings as the moment to embark neared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: In 1991 a Swiss explorer and a British flying instructor attempted to do what had never been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[18,117,19,17,327,41742,11523,13245],"class_list":{"0":"post-57738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-the-balloonists","14":"tag-tiff","15":"tag-toronto-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}