About the film

Any single race in RacingThePlanet’s 4Deserts Ultramarathon Series is an extraordinary, life-threatening challenge – something we would only expect the most accomplished, elite athletes on the planet to try. But most of the courageous men and women who come from all over the world to compete in these Herculean events are not professional athletes at all, they’re ordinary people —people with families and day jobs and mortgage payments – people like you and me who have decided, for a variety of personal reasons, to take on this extreme physical challenge. Why do they do it? Are they crazy? Most of these competitors are people who have made the choice to push themselves, both physically and mentally, in order to test the outermost boundaries of what is truly possible for us as human beings. Almost every competitor in these races says, with simple conviction, “If I can do this, then I know I can do anything”. And hey – life is short.

These passionate competitors are the focus of the feature-length documentary “Desert Runners”. This character-driven story follows a remarkable collection of brave souls on their year-long adventure, racing to the four corners of the Earth. The film includes all of the drama and mirrors all of the elements of the world-class adventure races it documents: challenge and excitement, passion and risk, competition and camaraderie, heartbreak and triumph. Along the way these courageous competitors face the thrill of danger, the heart-wrenching agony of physical pain and mental defeat, and the emotional victory of crossing the finish line, forever changed from the inside out. “Desert Runners” brings to audiences everywhere the intimate, inside story of what can happen when a group of ordinary people make the life-changing decision to attempt the extraordinary.