Press

“Like all good sports docs, the film goes from micro to macro on a dime, ultimately achieving an exhausted beauty.”
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

“Compelling… more deeply revealing than the triumph-over-adversity saga one expects.”
Dennis Harvey, Variety

“The ordeal is captured in all its gory glory… a terrific personal epic of endurance and wit.”
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

“Raw with emotions… nothing less than fascinating.”
Adia Waldburger, Park City Record

“This film is a triumph… it is a testimony to the vast loneliness of the ocean and the mental fortitude it takes to cross it.”
Bob Whitby, Orlando Weekly

“An engrossing, tautly edited documentary.”
Joshua Katzman, Chicago Reader

“A meditation on the outer limits of human endurance, the commitments we make to our friends and to ourselves, and what it means to be a winner… It is also imbued with a good deal of humor and beauty… a remarkable film.”
Michael Read, Release Print (San Francisco)

“A great benchmark for the genre… it’s impossible not to be swept away… This is the one you shouldn’t miss if it comes on TV or DVD. See now. No Excuses.”
Gina Carbone, Portsmouth Herald (New Hampshire)

“The film is a mix of all the classic narratives: man versus himself, man versus God, and man versus another man (in this case, his teammate). Friendships are destroyed, marriages are tested, and innumerable blisters are popped throughout the voyage, which is as psychologically challenging as it is physically brutal.“
Christian Schaeffer, The Pitch (Kansas City)

“Similar in some ways to Touching the Void (2003), Row Hard is especially effective in illustrating how extreme physical conditions can lay bare a person’s true self.”
Cheryl Eddy, San Francisco Bay Guardian

“The film’s measured pace works… Row Hard delivers more than a chronicle of a tortuous competition—it explores the protagonists’ near-fanatical quest for ‘success’, and the hunger of a son for his father’s recognition.”
Laura Lewis-Barr, Screen Magazine (Chicago)

“Provides thought-provoking moments carried and remembered by the viewer long after the final frame has ended.”
Scott Neil, Royal Gazette (Bermuda)

“It gets at the heart of what it means to be human and why sports, or journeys, are an essential part of human existence.”
Sam Petri, Planet Jackson Hole

“Row Hard is, simply put, fascinating… Keep an eye out for this one… because it really deserves an audience.”
John Serba, Grand Rapid Press

“Unlike Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Old Man and the Sea’ or Yann Martel’s ‘The Life of Pi,’ this event really happened. But truth always has been stranger than fiction.”
Martha’s Vineyard Times

2007
Tenerife International Film Festival
BEST DIRECTOR

MountainFilm in Telluride
MUST SEE AWARD

Jackson Hole Film Festival
BEST SPORTS ACTION FILM

Nantucket Film Festival
BEST STORYTELLING IN A DOCUMENTARY

New Hampshire Film Festival
BEST DOCUMENTARY

2008
Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival
BEST SPORTS ACTION FILM

Tiburon International Film Festival
BEST SPORTS FILM