Directed by James Moll and narrated and executive-produced by Matt Damon, RUNNING THE SAHARA is a uplifting and socially aware documentary chronicling the 111-day run coast to coast across the Sahara Desert completed by a team of three experienced runners (Charlie Engle from America, Ray Zahab from Canada, and Kevin Lin from Taiwan).
Initiated by Ray simply because no human being has ever done it before, the three agree to undertake this challenge together. Each has their character and motivation, but they accomplish the expedition collectively. This film details the journey's physical and emotional impact on the runners. It is about team-spirit, challenge, discovery, and most importantly believing and materialising one's dream.
The group's incredible voyage which covers 6 countries is met with various problems (the heat, sand storms, unknown visa and terrorist situation, injuries, and even self-doubt). Yet their strenuous experience is not without joyous and touching moments such as the arrival of their family, encouragement from friends, and the village children's greeting and running along with them.
This character-driven film provides a complex picture of culturally-vibrant Africa its mysteriously beautiful but extremely merciless desert, and its acute water problems (evidenced through the 7-year-old boy left alone in wilderness to wait for the return of his water-searching parents, and the primitive well-digging method). With the charitable H2O Africa campaigning for clean water being a component of the expedition, it is for sure that to ease the water crisis in the Continent will no longer remain a unfulfilled mission impossible.
