(Video courtesy of YouTube/LuckieBoot)
A new Australian documentary was released this week and it looks pretty damn good.
Fighting Fear focuses on the lives of two best friends who happen to be professional sportsmen and how their relationship with each other helped the them through the low points of their lives.
The film gives a glimpse into the lives of childhood friends, pro surfer Mark Mathews and MMA fighter Richie “Vas” Vaculik and examines how each had to deal with their fears to do what they do for a living.
Narrated by Warrior actor Joel Edgerton, the movie follows the two adrenaline junkies through their real-life struggles as they strive to make it in their respective ultra-competitive sports.
There were moments when filming, like when one of the stars was arrested for his involvement in a brawl, when the film seemed like it may never be completed, but even through bouts of binge drinking and bitter arguments, the documentary made it out unscathed, much like the pair’s friendship.
“In hindsight we were very lucky, and a lot of our friends weren’t so lucky, so I felt that if we could get Mark and Richie to go on record and warts and all talk about all this kind of stuff, it [would] help some of the other guys and kids all over the world,” the director Macario De Souza, who also directed Surf documentary Bra Boys explained to the NZ Herald. ”But then there was definitely times where I had to keep the camera rolling when they were in distress and that was kind of tough, and even just asking them really personal questions really got awkward at times.”
Although the stars of the documentary say they enjoyed the process of making the film the past few years, Vaculik, who was the one involved in the brawl said it was tough to watch some of his darker moments like going to court to face charges back in 2008 of grievous bodily harm, after allegedly beating a man unconscious.
“It’s something I’m not proud of, it happened, but I look back at it and think that it’s really helped shape where I am today,” he says of the incident, for which he was found not guilty.
Mathews, who starred alongside Vaculik in “Bra Boys” says that the film focuses a lot more on the importance of the bond they share.
“It’s a different story to Bra Boys … this one’s about Richie and I and it’s really about friendship and how having that one special person, that one close mate, can make or break your life.”