The title of this movie has a two-pronged meaning: Hill is the name of a duo of World Champion F1 racers, Graham and his son Damon. They are the stars of this high-octane, impressively punchy sports documentary that manages to pull off the impossible: it’s not just for fans for racing, but targets a wider audience who enjoy human stories about tenacious, nothing-can-stop-me winners.
Though, if you’re Gen Z like me, chances are the name Damon Hill won’t ring any bells to your TikTok-stuffed ears. Your parents probably know him; to speak the language of my generation, he has nearly 300k followers on Instagram, so he’s a bit of a big deal.
But it’s understandable that many won’t have a clue who Hill is, or by extension his very famous father. This documentary aims to change that, exploring the impact of Graham’s tragic death on the then 15-year-old Damon, and how it shaped his future career in racing.
It’s important to note that I’m an F1 newbie. I’ve never seen a race and besides Michael Schumacher, I don’t know the big names involved. So, when I found myself utterly hooked throughout a nitrous-fuelled 90-minutes, I felt some kind of magic trick was being played on me.
I wasn’t pummelled with alienating car jargon that made me wish I’d done my homework, nor was I bombarded with anything that drove a wedge between me and the die-hard car fans out there. Instead, I was given a universal story of loss and the power of resilience.
Primarily told through archive footage and impressively prescient home movies, Alex Holmes presents a zoomed-in, hyper-focused look at Hill’s meteoric rise to fame and becoming number one. You’d think that going in pre-inverested, or with a general knowledge of the world, would kick the experience up a gear. And I’m sure knowing your spoilers from your front wing would boost a film of lesser quality, but Holmes does his job so well that it’s not an issue.
Damon is our focus, not the cars. And as a protagonist, we instantly root for him. He’s the underdog, a quiet-spoken everyman with a lot to prove; he’s essentially Rocky in a Williams FW18. As an audience, there’s nothing that grips us more than an underdog story: it’s a narrative we’re hard-coded to get behind, especially when the players involved are real people. So, with our main hero being a paragon for us, but going 300MPH, we relate to him and root for him.
The film also borrows from recent celebrity biopics like Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody. Although not a fictional drama, the ‘life story’ approach is swerved here in favour of exploring a clear-cut defining moment in Hill’s life, a period that saw great success mixed with soul-stirring lows.
It’s the kind of micro examination of what makes a champion tick that grows beyond whether you enjoy the sport or not, making a documentary that’s every bit the thrilling, speedy racing film you’d expect, but many times we’re put in the driving seat with Damon not through spectacle, but raw human emotion.
It’s quite profound, then, what Holmes manages to pull off. He certainly opened my eyes to racing as a sport, and the athletes that populate it. I guess my eyes were clouded, but now I see.
— Hill is at Glasgow Film Festival and will be available on Sky, NOW TV and on DVD in 2025 via Signature Entertainment.
