Via Indiewire – From the very first shot, it’s clear that “Nadia, Butterfly” is serious about its swimming; that the people behind and in front of the camera alike have spent a serious portion of their lives in the pool. You can see it in the patient way that Plante watches bodies move through the water, opening the film with a take that lasts for nearly the entire duration of an Olympic final. You can see it in the bodies themselves, as lead actress Katerine Savard — a professional swimmer who won a Bronze in Rio — has the kind of surfboard-sized deltoids that aren’t possible to build during pre-production. And you can definitely see it in the matter-of-fact way that the race of a lifetime is over even faster than it began, with decades of training capped off by a security guard shooing the swimmers away from the pool so the next event can begin. Every time Nadia Beaudry climbs out of the water, it feels like she’s leaving a wake.
Source: ‘Nadia, Butterfly’ Review: Olympic Swimmer Tries to Find Herself in ‘Lost in Translation’-Like Sports Drama
Who is Katerine Savard?
Katerine Savard (born May 26, 1993) is a Canadian competitive swimmer who specializes in women’s butterfly events and freestyle relay. She holds several Canadian national records in the butterfly over the 50-, 100-, and 200-metre distances in both the short and long courses. Savard also holds the Canadian junior butterfly record in the 200-metre event. She won the gold medal at the Summer Universiade in the 100-metre butterfly in 2012, while also garnering a medal in the 50-meter butterfly at the 2013 Universiade. Savard is the reigning Commonwealth Games champion in the 100-metre butterfly in Glasgow, where she set the Commonwealth record in the process. At the same games she also won a bronze as a member of the women’s 4×100-metre medley relay team. (Wikipedia)
NADIA, BUTTERFLY
LOGLINE: Nadia, an Olympic swimmer in her twenties, faces the challenges of her imminent retirement.
SYNOPSIS: While young and in her prime, Nadia decides to retire from pro swimming after the Olympic Games; to escape a rigid life of sacrifice. After her very last race, Nadia drifts into nights of excess punctuated by episodes of self-doubt. But even this transitional numbness cannot conceal her true inner quest: defining her identity outside the world of elite sports.
Written and directed by Pascal Plante
Cast: Katerine Savard, Ariane Mainville, Hilary Caldwell, Cailin McMurray, Pierre-Yves Cardinal, John Ralston, Amélie Marcil, Eli Jean Tahchi, Andrew Di Prata, Marie-José Turcotte
Produced by Dominique Dussault, Nemesis Films
Fiction | 107min | 2020 | Canada | 24.00 fps | HD | Ratio 1.5:1 | Stereo (theatrical version surround 5.1) | French with English subtitles
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