“I still can’t believe people get on airplanes and shut the window,” observes The Balloonists director John Dower, speaking with POV from the U.K. “It’s like, good god, the privilege you have of looking down at where we come from from 38,000 feet! But to do that, exposed to the elements like Bertrand and Brian were, I guess we were trying to put those moments of wonder and awe in the film.”
The Balloonists, premiering this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, indeed inspires wonder, awe, and a dazzling ability to soak up the world from high above. It’s the inspiring and gripping story of aeronauts Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones and their historic 1999 balloon ride around the world. Their non-stop 19-day adventure toured the globe in a hot air balloon without ever touching down, winning a worldwide race to achieve one of the final “firsts” in aeronautics. The Balloonists takes audiences along for the ride from Switzerland to Egypt with breathtaking archival coverage. But the real thrills aren’t just high in the sky: the grand adventure is how they got there.
Dower says he wasn’t familiar with the aeronauts’ tale when producers Teddy Leifer and Guy Horlock (All that Breathes) pitched him the story of two men and their balloons. After some bemusement about boys and toys, Dower, whose previous films include Thrilla in Manilla and My Scientology Movie, admits he harnessed Piccard and Jones’ sense of adventure.
“I’ve been making documentaries for 25 years. I’ve never done anything in the adventure genre, mainly because I’m a total coward,” Dower laughs before making a surprising admission: “I also have terrible vertigo.” He says the thought of going up into a balloon didn’t seem too appealing, and wasn’t a challenge he accepted during production. But he notes that also helped hone the tale by sticking with the archival treasure chest in lieu of going up in a balloon to shoot recreations “But the more I looked into the story, and it is a great story, what I liked about it is this unlikely couple, Bertrand and Brian,” he says.
He notes that the eccentricity entailed in pursuing this goal inevitably makes for intriguing characters and invites larger questions that a film demands. “I kept thinking of these two guys being up in essentially a glorified basket, and they go through thunderstorms and they fly over countries that could potentially shoot them down. I was immediately interested what kind of people would do this,” says Dower.
Particularly with Piccard, The Balloonists observes how the Swiss adventurer/explorer/psychiatrist endeavours to uphold the legacy of his father, undersea explorer Jacques Piccard, and his grandfather, balloonist and undersea explorer Auguste Piccard. (Intriguingly Dower mentions that Auguste serves as inspiration for the Tin Tin character Professor Calculus, as proof of the family legacy.)
But success and the weight of expectations don’t make it easy for Piccard to lift off and hit the heights he anticipates. The Balloonists observes a series of failures, often very public ones with the media attention entailed in his flights, as Piccard learns through trial and error what formula makes for the perfect flight.
“I liked the idea that Bertrand had tried and failed several times,” says Dower. “This wasn’t just a sort of glory story: Off he goes and he does it. He’s failed several times and he’s very open about his failure. I find the failure almost as interesting as the success.”
Piccard’s thwarted attempts also mean a changeover in partners in addition to tactics and materials. Enter English balloonist Jones, whose story arguably gives the documentary its emotional thrust as he relives it from the sky while his wife, Joanna, recalls experiencing it from the ground as part of the team navigating the expedition.
“I love the idea that Brian—this classic Englishman: quiet, stiff upper lip—wasn’t supposed to be in the balloon. As we’d say in soccer, or football over here, he basically comes off the subs bench because Bertrand fell out with the two other partners,” says Dower. Jo and Andy Elson, one of the former partners, lend their voices to the contemporary interviews, and their respective feelings about adventure—fear, amazement, frustration, joy—make the trip a true roller coaster of emotions.
Dower finds these human elements key, since they ultimately ground the story after the balloon flight offers a novel hook. “I once made a film [Thrilla in Manilla] about the boxer, Joe Frazier and his three fights from Muhammad Ali, and I wasn’t so much interested in making a boxing film, even though the boxing was incredible,” says Dower. “But it was about this rivalry between these two men. I don’t really look at this as a balloon film. It’s the story of these two guys who were almost thrown together and go through this incredible experience.”
Dower credits editor David Charap for performing a Herculean task with modest archival material. “I was very keen to have the moments of failure, so we actually took out some of the Orbiter 3 journey and some of the other escapades that happened,” says Dower. “They were in that balloon a long time, and we put in the failure of Orbiter 1.” That balloon lands quickly thanks to a fuel leak, while Orbiter 2 makes it to Asia before Chinese officials force a landing in Myanmar.
That backdrop of failure makes the launch of the Breitling Orbiter 3 particularly riveting even if one knows the outcome. “There is this amazing moment where Brian, somebody who doesn’t get rattled—and we’re talking 20-plus years after the event—suddenly tells me about the moment when they actually take off and he says goodbye to Jo, which you see in the archive,” recalls Dower. “In the contemporary interview, Brian just suddenly burst into tears.” It’s a touching moment that adds considerable dramatic stakes and conveys just how alone the aeronauts are on their fearless journey.
“That shows how much it’s still in his bones and under his skin,” adds Dower. “Adventure docs often are populated by Alpha males and what I love about these guys in the balloon world is that they’re all quite eccentric.”
In actually conveying the near-20-day journey fuelled by that offbeat passion and innovation, Dower says he and Charap partly honed in on moments of awe and wonder. “I love Bertrand’s description of flying over the Sahara Desert. He says, ‘People think deserts are just an expanse of nothing. No, it’s the complete opposite. There’s these incredible shapes and colours,’” notes the director. The film truly conveys that infinitesimal sense of being human in a huge planet. Other moments favour white-knuckle drama, like getting caught in a storm, and then shooting a narrow flight path to clear air travel around China.
The Balloonists also benefits from the intimacy of the archival material from inside Orbiter 3. “Ironically, that quite shitty camera in the corner of Orbiter 3, like a GoPro on their faces, just captured so much,” he admits. “It was a wonder. That camera was our saviour: We kept finding ourselves returning to it.”
The director notes that coverage inside the cabin was limited because Piccard and Jones had to remember to turn the camera on to record their journey, but the editing again makes a seamless adventure as it weaves between archive and contemporary interviews. “Jo’s voice is almost as important as theirs in it,” notes Dower. Views from the ground ratchet up the tension, too, as Joanna recalls working doggedly with her team to ensure that her husband and Piccard survived the storm or performed calculations to guide them on the journey.
Also important is Luke, a Belgian weatherman, who offers insights into the elements and variable that can twist the journey, like shifts in temperature, unexpected winds, or storms. His perspective also helps distill the science to make it accessible for audiences without dumbing it down.
Despite all these hooks—adventure, suspense, and emotion fuelled by beautiful vistas and a stirring score—Dower situates The Balloonists within the larger climate for documentary production. “I think this is the first time I’ve made a film that’s not funded by broadcasters,” he notes. “There is a slightly different experience because you don’t have the broadcaster giving you notes, and it is just different.”
Instead, audiences might notice the logo for Red Bull Studios in the credits with Rise Films and Anonymous Content. The energy drink is increasingly finding a foothold in the documentary space—not with branded content, but simply as a production partner, in this case for an inspiring story. “Feature documentaries that appear in festivals are harder and harder to fund, and thankfully someone like Red Bull is willing to put in money,” says Dower. “I mean, this is a perfect story for them. It happens in the sky and Red Bull’s whole ethos is about what gives you wings.”
Dower hopes that audiences get a taste of that motivation with The Balloonists and its odds-defying odyssey. “I’m hoping that’s why people are going to respond to this film because it I think it genuinely was the last attempt,” he says. “I think Breitling said to Bertrand, ‘This is it, man. This is your third and final go. We’re not doing it again.’ I admire people who are willing to show their vulnerability in that way.”
And maybe seeing on the big screen will help Dower conquer his fear of heights. But if not on the first festival screening, maybe the second or third.
