Guor Marial's flightIt started when he was six years old, after three days hiding in the forest and when his town, Pariang, in South Sudan, was assaulted and became another scene of horror. His parents had already mourned the death of eight of his nine older brothers and wanted no more: they decided that he would go to the city of Bentiu, near the border with Sudan, and that he would seek a better life there. Despite his young age, despite everything, he found her. Although Marial had to run a lot to do it, first to escape death and slavery and then to become the first Olympian in South Sudan at the London 2012 Games. His story is now related in the documentary Runner, which for a few days has been available on demand on his website (Runnerdoc.com), but in fact it gives for several chapters, for a series.

«During the London Games I read an interview with Guor and I found that everything he explained was incredible. I needed to know more. So I looked up his phone, called him, and he accepted my proposal to make a documentary. It was very fast. In fact, I was on vacation in Murcia and I had to catch the first flight to Heathrow, "recalls the director of the job, Bill Gallagher , an American based in Madrid. His interest was born from what happened to Marial before the Olympic event, but grew with him afterwards.

From before, especially, the hardness of his double evasion on the run. Marial discovered that he was really fast while saving his life. The first time he escaped from an armed group of Messirias, the tribe that had attacked his town, which had captured and imprisoned him while he was picking mangoes on the outskirts of Bentiu. And the second escaped from a Sudanese army general who, after offering him a job as an employee at his home across the border, chained him there and beat him up several times. In the end Marial was taken to a refugee camp and, when he was 15 years old, taken up in Concord, a town in the United States. "When he arrived at the institute he tried various sports and they saw that he was very good at athletics, but he did not want to run. I did not see it as a diversion, I saw it as a means of survival, "says Gallagher, with much to tell. The South Sudanese soon became the best in the state, got a scholarship to Iowa State University and at age 27 he achieved the minimum of the marathon for the London Games, but there he could not wave any flag.

His country had celebrated independence only a few months earlier and had no Olympic committee, so it was unable to officially participate in the Games. Marial made history in 2012 as an athlete without a country and accepted that, to wear the national colors, to enjoy the full experience, she needed to qualify for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. What happened next ... «Various media narrated the life of Marial before London, but I saw that there was a lot left to explain », Gallagher points out and invites anyone who wants to see the documentary to discover how Marial ended up being the flag bearer for South Sudan in Rio. To achieve this, he ran three marathons in a very short time, avoided corruption, was injured and even made a serious mistake: in the Ottawa marathon, in Canada, he made a mistake when he was close to achieving the minimum.

"The documentary has been very well received at various festivals and now we are launching it online to help various local organizations and movie theaters in the United States," Gallagher concludes, discovering that after working as an Uber driver in Boston, Marial works now in the United States Army and continues to train to be in the next Tokyo 2021 Games. If he succeeds, there will be no better finishing touch to his history: after the signed peace agreements, the marathoner will represent the past, the present and the future of South Sudan.

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