The Gymnast

Fourteen-year-old Monica’s dreams of 1996 Olympic glory are dashed by an earth-shattering accident. Charlotte Glynn’s debut captures everyday life in Pittsburgh with clarity and empathy, tracing the fragile moments where hope and hardship collide.

Monica is 14 old and will be 17 when the Atlanta Olympics take place in 1996. That is where she wants to be, representing the United States in gymnastics. But an accident suddenly renders a future as an elite athlete unlikely at best. Her world collapses, along with that of her father, who has given everything to support his daughter’s chance at glory.

Time was of the essence in making Charlotte Glynn’s first fiction feature, The Gymnast, for she found in real-life athlete and vlog-savvy teenager Britney Wheeler the ideal lead. Realness is central to the film, with its low-key attention to everyday lives and the working families of Pittsburgh at a moment when heavy industry is in decline, leaving much of the local labour force adrift. These are hard times falling on decent people, and in this context a single injury becomes the pivot between the hope of a better future and the likelihood of long-term hardship.

It is a story many will recognise in one form or another, told with clarity, restraint and a keen sense of the fragile turning points that shape a life.

– Vanja Kaludjercic

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