''Big River Man'' is a 2009

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

directed by John Maringouin. It follows the Slovenian long-distance swimmer Martin Strel as he swims the entire 3,300 mile length of the Amazon River, between February and April 2007. The film was nominated for the grand Jury Prize at the

2009 Sundance Film Festival The 2009 Sundance Film Festival was held during January 15, 2009 until January 25 in Park City, Utah. It was the 25th iteration of the Sundance Film Festival. Awards *Grand Jury Prize: Documentary - '' We Live in Public'' *Grand Jury Prize: Drama ...

and won the Excellence in Cinematography Award (Maringouin also shot the film). It is being distributed by Revolver Entertainment and the

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel, known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery, is an American cable channel that is best known for its ongoing reality television shows and promotion of pseudoscience. It init ...

Reception

The film has been almost universally praised, achieving a score of 90% by

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, as well as a score of 67 from

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

indicating generally favorable reviews. Critics praised the humor and story telling of the documentary and many compared it to a

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; né Stipetić; born 5 September 1942) is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusu ...

documentary. One negative review came from Anthony Quinn of Independent, who called the on-screen chronicle of the swim "fuzzy and flaky".

Soundtrack score

2m1 Records released the soundtrack score at the beginning of 2011. In the liner notes, 2m1 Records states: " Rich Ragsdale's wonderful musical achievement defines Martin Strel and his comedic yet serious struggle in swimming 3,300 miles down the Amazon River. Going from a Pendereckian aesthetic to even post-rock and orchestral minimalism, this score is contagious in its ability to take you on a comedic yet dark subconscious emotional journey of Big River Man's eclectic protagonist." In association with KNR Productions and Producer Andrew P. Alderete, 2m1 released this album through

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and

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

External links

* 2009 films American sports documentary films Films set in the Amazon 2009 documentary films Documentary films about sportspeople 2000s English-language films 2000s American films English-language documentary films {{sport-documentary-film-stub