When I met Christian Forget, one of the two protagonists of Regarding Gravity, his unconventional, lunar beauty immediately fascinated me. Since 2005, I have regularly worked with him as a life model for my photography. Over these years of collaboration we developed a sense of affinity and trust that was crucial to the making of the film.

When Christian told me about his plan to fly in 2010, it immediately struck me that this image of a visually impaired man as a body rising into the sky was charged with meaning. His unusual project was anchored in technical know-how and concrete activities, but it also involved elements of the imaginary and of desire. I thought that this story of a physically disabled individual succeeding in escaping gravity, could symbolize a conquest of the improbable—an ecstatic transcendence of limitations. And it struck me that this quest should be made into a film, possibly because of the inherently kinetic aspect of both flight and the cinema.

Still, it took me several more years to find the form that this project would take. Christian often got caught up in rehashing past events, and I was not sure how this evanescent material could be transformed into a vibrant, embodied, dynamic story. It was only when Bruce, the second character, appeared in 2013, that I saw how a dense and singular film could emerge. Bruce delivered a stream of visions, gestures, and imaginations that intensified and illuminated Christian’s quest, repeating the motifs of ascent and the fall. Although the experience of flight was first and foremost Christian’s own, Bruce, in his own way, named that experience, imbuing it with an unsuspected poetic zest and expressive power. He helped to shift what might have been no more than a picturesque anecdote onto the terrain of myth.

The shooting of the film was often difficult, both in human and logistical terms. But in the end it was above all a remarkable experience and a rare privilege to participate so intimately in the intense lives of these two exceptional men. I wanted to avoid the sentimentalism and moralism that can ensnare work on subjects like disability and psychic disorders by presenting a story with surrealist undertones, combining the naturalism of “direct cinema” with an approach that allows space for wandering and play, where fantasy take hold of the real.

Matthieu Brouillard