Under the shadow of the sport’s darkest era, Australia's first professional world tour cycling team GreenEdge was formed in 2011. Built from a culture of honesty, egalitarianism and authenticity, the phenomenal team earned the respect of the cycling world.
Madman Productions was approached by GreenEdge and saw a great opportunity to tell this important, inspiring and engaging Australian story. Premiering at the 2017 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), All For One offers unique insights into the first five years of the team’s journey.
Following its world premiere, All for One will be released in Australian cinemas on 24 August.
Film Victoria spoke with Producer Nick Batzias and discussed the genesis of the project, the challenging yet rewarding filming process and the motivation behind telling this story to the world.
Can you talk us through the inception stage of the project? How did the discussions start between Madman and GreenEdge?
Dan Jones, who had been filming the GreenEdge story as an embedded journalist for the online series Backstage Pass, approached us in 2015. He had seen Fairless, also directed by All For One 's director Marcus Cobbledick, Save Your Legs! and a bunch of other documentaries released by Madman. At that stage he had over 4000 hours of footage, all shot with the benefit of incredible access. We all quickly agreed this was an opportunity to really tell the human story behind cycling, the team and its members.
In what ways did you want to complement and build on the existing footage GreenEdge had through Backstage Pass?
What we had via Dan’s work was already much richer than what had made the cut in Backstage Pass because of the unique access and his strong relationships with many of the key characters. However we wanted to ensure that our film wasn’t a ‘puff piece’ so we sought to round out the perspective of the story. We conducted over 60 interviews around Australia and abroad – cyclists, journalists, fans, parents and more. Also, given so much of our story was told from the inside looking out, we licensed race and other footage to also give context to so many of the great moments – highs and lows that occurred in the five year journey .
Can you describe the filming process? Who was involved and where did shooting take place?
Directors Dan Jones and Marcus Cobbledick really drove the process through filming and in the edit. Logistics and music/footage licensing were all handled in-house, whilst the picture and sound post were handled by the excellent teams at Blue Post and Windmill respectively.
The original footage was shot all over the cycling world. Since then we have conducted interviews in Australia, at a training camp in South Africa, at the Vuelta in Spain and in Columbia.
What were the biggest challenges and payoffs along the journey?
It is always tricky telling a team’s story, with multiple protagonists, many storylines and balancing the human stories with cycling highlights. The reward of this work has really been the response from those who have seen it – both hard-core cyclists, complete non-cyclists and those in between. Everyone seems to be taking something away from the film. We’ve had laughter and tears, in the right spots.
Given the challenges and controversy that has surrounded professional world tour cycling in the past, how important was it to tell this story and how will this story resonate with audiences?
Undoubtedly the sport does have a lingering shadow of some of the controversies from the past, but we certainly see All For One as a new chapter. Hopefully it will reinforce for audiences many of the things that make team sport and team effort a great thing, and remind them of what is possible when you get a group of like-minded folks together in the pursuit of a shared belief and goal.
Watch the official trailer here.