Objetivo Finisher
2014 · 15m · España
Directed by David Huergo
Genres: biography, documentary, sports
Tones: contemplative
José Carlos Huergo, a 56-year-old businessman with two hip prostheses and three herniated discs, sets out to overcome his physical limits by competing in an Ironman.
Picked by Zoe
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Everyone expects the underdog sports doc to be inspirational drivel, so Huergo's refusal to sand down the actual pain—the body's betrayal, the vanity in the attempt—is genuinely subversive; it's a sports film that doesn't believe in sports.
The restraint here is admirable: a contemplative documentary that resists the triumphalist arc, positioning itself against the grain of motivational cinema while maintaining formal clarity about what endurance actually looks like.
The crucial move is shooting Huergo's body without either fetishizing the disability or erasing it—there's a specificity in how the film frames physical limitation as neither tragedy nor inspiration, just the material fact the filmmaker builds everything else from.