Prosperi – Leonardo Creation

MAURO PROSPERI

Mauro Prosperi, an Italian Olympic athlete, goes to Morocco to participate in the Marathon des Sables, an ultra-marathon that takes place over 6 days, covering a distance of 250 km, in the Sahara desert.

Mauro, as a former (almost) Olympic winner, has a lot to prove to himself and the world…

On the third day of competition the athletes are surprised by a violent sandstorm. Mauro finds himself in the center of the storm, he loses his bearings and ends up buried in the sand.

8 hours later everything has calmed down and the desert is once again a peaceful red expanse. Mauro emerges from the sand.

Left alone, without food or water, deprived of any reference, burned by the 120 degrees sun, Mauro is convinced that he can reach the other athletes and possibly still win, so he resumes the march… but he choses the wrong direction.

Mauro will be forced to drink his own urine in order not to die and to feed on snakes and bats killed with his bare hands.

He will fight against ferocious predators and befriend a camel that will lead him to safety through a minefield.

He will be the victim of hallucinations and painful memories and will sleep next to a rotting corpse.

Mauro will lose all hope to the point of even attempting to commit suicide by cutting his wrists.. his body is so dehydrated that he cannot even bleed out.

On the tenth day, devastated in body and mind, Mauro finally sees clouds in the sky which, as the Tuareg say, indicate the presence of man.
With his breath he begins to run as fast as he can.
A desperate race in which he relives all the victories and defeats of his life, until, now dying, he runs into a Berber girl: she is his salvation.

STORY

Mauro Prosperi was born in Rome in 1955, he started running as a boy and joined the sports teams of the Italian Police Forces, specializing in modern pentathlon (fencing, swimming, horse riding, shooting and running).

Mauro will be 9 times Italian team champion, 3 times solo champion and in 1984 his team wins first price at the Los Angeles Olympics, even if Mauro had been forced by the Federation not to compete.

An injustice that at 39 will convince him to try his hand at the “toughest race in the world”, the Marathon des Sables, with a lot to prove.

The film explores the struggle of a man through the most inhuman experience filtered through the fear, struggle and frustrations that make him, and us, human.

THE RACE

The Marathon des Sables is an ultra-marathon that takes place every year in the Moroccan Sahara desert over the span of 6 days, covering a distance of 250 km.

Each stage must be completed within a predetermined number of hours and in complete self-sufficiency.

The organization provides athletes with a survival kit consisting of a few items (including a small knife, a lighter, a sleeping bag, a poison kit) and a ration of water not exceeding 9 liters per day, distributed in special checks points located every 10 km along the route.

Mauro’s extraordinary story went around the world, was told by the major international newspapers and inspired documentaries made by National Geographic, BBC, Discovery, Netflix…

The Netflix show ‘Losers’ tells eight different stories: that of a boxer, a football team, an ice skater, a curling player, a desert marathoner (Italian Mauro Prosperi), the driver of a pack of sled , a street ball player and a golfer.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s crew of “Revenant” involved Prosperi as a consultant for the most complex survival scenes of the film starring Oscar winner Leonardo Di Caprio.