Seventy Days, Seventy Kilometers: Following a Man Running for His Life

1. Understanding the Concept

When Daniel first told me about his plan — running across Europe, 70 kilometers a day for over 70 days — it sounded unreal. But the heart of the story wasn’t just about physical endurance. It was about mental freedom. Daniel’s past struggles with OCD, anxiety, and depression added a raw emotional weight to the idea. This wasn’t a race. It was a matter of survival, transformation, and quiet rebellion against everything that once held him back.

2. Strategy and Positioning

From the start, I knew this had to be more than just another adventure film. The focus wasn’t on the kilometers or countries — it was on the internal landscape. The challenge was to translate that subtlety to the screen: positioning the film as a story of mental strength, curiosity, and rediscovery. We wanted it to resonate with anyone who had faced something seemingly impossible and asked, “What if?”

The strategy evolved into six well-planned episodes, each one capturing a specific high or low point of the journey. These episodes are designed not only to build narrative momentum but also to reflect the emotional and physical extremes Daniel faced. Alongside the episodes, I maintained a steady stream of daily updates on social media — short-form edits, reels, and stills that invited the audience to follow along in real time. The combination of long-form storytelling and short, consistent posts helped keep people invested, connected, and part of the run from start to finish.

Creative Development and Design

Visually, the series had to reflect the harshness of Daniel’s reality, rather than romanticizing it. From the beginning, I envisioned something raw and gritty, almost like a modern western. The loneliness, the brutality of the repetition, the fight against both body and mind — it needed to feel real. No polish, just truth.

We leaned into a rough aesthetic. Drone shots were used sparingly, but purposefully — often to emphasize the scale of emptiness, endless roads, or dramatic nature. The color palette is complex and bright, dominated by reds and yellows that mirror exhaustion, heat, friction, but also movement and momentum. At the same time, the tone is cinematic and intimate. The camera often stays close, capturing emotion in the face, the breath, and the body mid-stride. It’s not just what the run looks like, but what it feels like. The goal was to bring the audience into that mental space, not just as observers, but as companions.

Implementation and Brand Guidelines

I followed Daniel as a one-person crew, capturing everything in real time through rain, heat, exhaustion, and sleep deprivation. The process was raw and fast-paced. I shot from the moving camping van, ran alongside him with the camera, and lived out of a camper van that doubled as my editing suite. After each day’s 70 kilometers, I edited and published a short highlight post with updates and progress, staying consistent to keep the audience locked in and present with us.

Photography played a key role in capturing the in-between moments — blistered hands, quiet looks, and stretching landscapes — and the images were edited and published almost instantly. Most were posted directly to Instagram Stories, allowing people to stay inside the journey as it unfolded.

The longer episodes came together quickly and under pressure, often within 7 to 10 days per piece. With limited time, I focused on what truly mattered: stripping away the noise, letting silence and fatigue speak, and letting Daniel’s voice carry the rhythm. Each episode became a compact, unfiltered slice of the run, cut close to the skin, rough, emotional, and always honest.

Conclusion

This project has been the most demanding and rewarding journey I’ve ever undertaken — both as a filmmaker and as a person. What began as an idea about a man running across Europe became something far more profound: a raw exploration of mental strength, vulnerability, and the quiet power of showing up every single day.

Working alone meant I had to be everything at once — director, shooter, editor, producer, support crew — adapting constantly to whatever the road threw at us. There was no buffer, no second takes, just real life unfolding with the camera rolling. And that’s what I think makes the material special: it’s immediate, imperfect, and honest.

Through quick-turn edits, gritty episodes, and fast-paced publishing, I learned to trust the story as it happened, not to over-polish, but to shape it just enough for people to feel it. This wasn’t about creating a flawless film. It was about staying present, staying connected, and finding a cinematic language that honored the real emotion behind every step of the run.

Looking back, it’s clear this was more than a documentary — it was a test of endurance for both of us. And now, with the material in hand, I’m excited to take the final step: pulling it all together into something lasting, something true.