The Swedish short film “Ten Meter Tower” is really simple: what do people look like when they’re facing a high dive for the first time?
The film played at Sundance this year in the Documentary Shorts category, and the NY Times is currently featuring it in its rotating collection of “op-ed videos”. The filmmakers describe the project this way:
Our objective in making this film was something of a psychology experiment: We sought to capture people facing a difficult situation, to make a portrait of humans in doubt. We’ve all seen actors playing doubt in fiction films, but we have few true images of the feeling in documentaries. To make them, we decided to put people in a situation powerful enough not to need any classic narrative framework. A high dive seemed like the perfect scenario…
It’s fun without being entirely frivolous, and dramatic without being distressing. There’s no politics in it and there’s nothing complicated about it. I think it’s well worth 16 minutes of your time!