Wyatt Star is the first motorcycle rider in attempting a jump over a football field. After crashing the practice jump, with a broken body and a broken bike Starman will have to face a life full of past mistakes if he wants to get back on that ramp, and weigh if it is finally worth it.

Starman is set in the painstaking and gruelling world of stuntmen, where a motorcycle rider, Wyatt Star, attempts to defy all odds by jumping the length of a football field in order to have his big comeback. After failing the rehearsal jump and breaking body and bike, Wyatt is unable to afford the proper replacement parts, forcing him to take difficult decisions that his family and friends may not approve.

The movie was shot on Arri Alexa and produced as a Thesis film for the American Film Institute program. It’s a story that got the team together around the idea of sacrificing everything for a dream, however hard, or sometimes selfish that can be, and the importance to cherish the ones we love. Filmmaking is a selfish path often, we are entertainers, and hopefully we can bring joy or reflection, but it’s rare that we serve other more than ourselves. It’s a painful description, but as a foreigner, having missed many occasion, births and deaths included, it’s hard not to feel guilty the same way our Wyatt Star feels when he risks his life while pushing away the ones who care for him.

Wonderfully directed by Josema Roig, Starman holds a strong poise throughout with a stellar story progression and development. We are easily plunged into the main protagonists dilemmas as we ride through a desperate man’s downfall.

It’s a deceivingly shallow topic (motocross) that allowed us to tell a very human story, being the relationships here the only thing that we treat as “extreme”. As producer Jo Henriquez says “We told a story about an asshole with as much compassion and love as possible.”