Councilmember Kristina Duggan and City of Long Beach will host the debut US screening of Elliott Hasler’s British indie film, Vindication Swim, on July 11th at the Aquarium of the Pacific.
This historic screening aims to build excitement for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, where Long Beach will host several aquatics events including the Olympic 10K Marathon Swim.
Follow this link to reserve tickets.
Based on the inspirational true story of Mercedes Gleitze, who in 1927 became the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Vindication Swim depicts Mercedes’ upstream struggle in overcoming both the cold waters of the English Channel and the oppressive society of 1920’s England. However, after a rival comes forward claiming to have accomplished the same feat,
Mercedes is forced into battle to retain her record and her legacy.
Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Elliott Hasler, the film took four years to make with all the swimming sequences shot in the English Channel itself without the use of tanks, green screens, or body doubles. The filmmakers also adopted an environmental impacts initiative during the making of the film to cut down on the production’s carbon footprint by using zero plastic throughout the production of the film.
Earlier this year, the 97-minute Vindication Swim hit UK theatres with a splash, breaking top 20 at the box office and receiving a wave of positive reviews from critics who hailed the film as “a truly epic independent film on a scale never seen before.” In May, the film was hailed as “one of the top UK buzz titles” in Cannes, where Hasler became the first writer/director born this century to have a film screened at the festival.
The cast includes Kirsten Callaghan who swam in all the scenes herself, braving the English Channel waters from April to October during filming, John Locke (Poor Things), Victoria Summer (Saving Mr. Banks), James Wilby (Howard’s End) and Douglas Hodge (Joker).
Councilmember Kristina Duggan was elected in November 2022 to serve the residents of the 3rd District in Long Beach, where she has lived for over 25 years and co-owns and operates Dr. Duggan & Associates, a successful local behavioral health center in the Belmont Heights area of Long Beach.
Her Legacy
In 1933 Gleitze explained, “It’s having the willpower to endure the cold and not be disconcerted at the nearness of porpoises, dolphins and even sharks, to bear the pain of aching shoulders, knees and shins and to remain floating in the water with your arm seized with cramp and remain unperturbed when a large steamer passes too near. When you cannot have the hot drinks you’ve longed for and when an attack of sleep threatens to send you to the land of oblivion, but to have the courage to say I want to carry on.”
Gleitze (1900-1981) was a British pioneer and marathon swimmer from London who is a dual inductee having been voted by the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame as an Honor Swimmer in it Class of 1969 and the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an Honor Open Water Pioneer Swimmer in its Class of 2014.
For additional details of the film are here.
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