Wingmen, the new documentary, follows three of the world’s most renowned BASE jumpers and good friends – Jokke Sommer, Espen Fadnes and Ludovic Woerth – as they attempt to ‘proximity fly’ everywhere from the Christ in Rio de Janeiro to the Tianmen Mountains of Eastern China.
‘Proximity flying’ is an incredibly dangerous and undoubtedly extreme sport that involves leaping from a helicopter or off a precipice and then gliding as close to either the ground or raised obstacles as possible. The heart-in-mouth stunts are made possible by custom suits worn by the fliers, who can stay airborne over the course of several miles.
It’s about as perilous as it sounds. Twelve high-profile proximity fliers have fallen victim to their sport in the last 2 years alone. Tragically, for director Christen Roede and his team of daredevil fliers, they would experience first hand what happens when a wingsuit flight goes wrong, reports The Telegraph.
In March last year, while filming Wingmen, Woerth and New Zealand jumper Dan Vicary apparently miscalculated their trajectory on a jump in the Swiss Lütschental valley. Both men were killed instantly. Roede says the accident is emblematic of a sport that lives on the very edge of human experience: ‘It just shows the risks they were willing to take,’ says Roede, who counts himself as a personal friend of the fliers.
‘The excitement drives them to do it, and because everyone else just says ‘they’re crazy’, we wanted to show a balance, show why they did this’.
Wingmen was initially the brainchild of Sommer, who approached Roede with his vision of a film full of stunts and spectacle on an international scale. ‘We wanted to create something iconic,’ Roede enthuses. ‘Like that flight in Rio’.
Referring to a jump in 2013, when Fadnes flew under the arm of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, with Woerth filming from just behind. Although it showed an illegal activity, the nail-biting clip proved an instant hit when it was released, gaining the wingmen an element of notoriety long before Wingmen was due to be released – Reports The Telegraph.
However, losing Ludovic hit the team hard. Sommer, to whom ‘Ludo’ was ‘like a big brother’, speaks frankly in the film about his teammate. ‘He achieved his biggest dream’, says the Norwegian, acknowledging his friend’s legacy. Roede too believes that Ludo wouldn’t have swapped the excitement for a life of placid boredom. ‘They knew what they were doing’, says the producer, ‘and he took it very seriously’.
This jaw-dropping and heart-breaking extreme sports films is now streaming on Garage Entertainment, watch now:
