The Forum Presents 'Murderball'
Oct. 21, 2005 – "Murderball" will play at The Forum, Market Square East on Wednesday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m.
Featuring fierce rivalry, stopwatch suspense and larger than life personalities, "Murderball," winner of the Documentary Audience Award and a Special Jury Prize for Editing at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, is a film about tough, highly competitive rugby players: quadriplegic rugby players. Whether by car wreck, fistfight, gunshot, or rogue bacteria, these men have been forced to live life sitting down. In their own version of the full-contact sport, they battle each other in custom-made gladiator-like wheelchairs, pursuing gold medals and proving to themselves and to anyone who see them in action that there is life after disability.
From the gyms of Middle America to the Olympic arena in Athens, Greece, "Murderball" tells the story of a group of indomitable, world-class athletes unlike any ever shown on screen. It will smash every stereotype you have ever had about "gimps" and "cripples." It is a film about family, revenge, honor and the triumph of love over loss.
But most of all, it is a film about standing up, even after your spirit and your spine have been crushed.
New York Times: "This exciting, richly human documentary about wheelchair rugby as played by members of the United States Paralympic Team avoids the inspirational bromides of many movies about the disabled. Its disturbing observation that brutal, cutthroat athletic competition gives the players a reason to live can easily be extended to embrace our entire national sports mania."