To truly live a hike and fly adventure vicariously through another is to go along for the whole ride—the training and preparations, the pain, struggles, achievements, and exhilarating highs. This and more is what director Mathis Decroux was aiming to capture while making the documentary Up & Down, which follows paragliding athlete and Haglöfs ambassador François Montuori as he competes in two Hike & Fly races in the Alps.  

Here, we venture even further behind the scenes with Mathis to learn what it was like keeping up with François while making this film, and to ponder parallels between Hike & Fly and the human experience.  

Why would anyone get the idea to produce a film about running up a mountain and paragliding down?  

“What a crazy idea to go up a mountain and fly down under such a thin wing… This recent discipline is getting more and more popular, and being able to fly down—or even through—the massifs offers so many new possibilities for mountain practices. It’s also an aesthetic sport. I don’t practice it myself, but as an experienced trail runner, I found it very interesting to highlight this new sport in a movie.”   

How would you describe the hike and fly community?  

“Even if they fly on their own, it’s a collective sport: they have an assistance team and sometimes fly as a team. At some point in Fly Chablais, François makes a mistake and has to land earlier with a competitor, Remi. They teamed up to take off again and find the best line to avoid other mistakes.”  

How did the production team work during the actual competition?  

“We were following François in two competitions: Bornes To Fly and Fly Chablais. We were a production team of three persons: a still photographer, a drone pilot, and me as a director and main camera guy.   

"At some checkpoints, we were able to hike up with him to capture footage of his ascents and take off. While he was flying, he used a POV camera on his helmet to film. It was intense for the production team since we had to go up at a fast pace, and then run down to the car and drive to the other valley while François was flying.”   

Looking back on the movie, what is the soul of this piece?  

"This movie is a comeback from both François and me after ending up in an avalanche accident that almost killed us in January. After recovering and stepping back from our recent events, we wanted to show how irregular a high-level athlete’s season could be. This is noticeable in sports competitions that last many days. So, the core message is not about performance but about a mindset: there’s always a way forward.  

“The activity of hiking and flying makes you go up and down the mountains. Just like life. Some days you feel like you could change the world, some others you feel destroyed. These ups and downs are part of who we are, and life is all about enjoying the ups and staying strong in the downs.” 

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY 

Everything is not as perfect as it looks. During a Hike & Fly race, athletes have to hike up passes and mountains and then travel by flying with a glider and reach some GPS points. 

Most of the time, they are able to fly over the mountains but sometimes they have to walk down. In this short documentary, we follow François Montuori, a French paragliding athlete in the competition Fly Chablais to discover the insights of the race and his assistance team : moments of doubts and joy, emotions... The real adventure, with its ups and downs…