Independent Documentary Review – Super Seniors

Films are meant to alter your mood. Comedies make you feel amused, horrors make you unsettled, action films get your adrenaline running, and family films give you a warm fuzzy feeling. Occasionally though, there are films that you know are meant to get you feeling all warm and fuzzy but somehow manage to make you feel a bit unsettled. Super Seniors is one of those films. The reason why I may have felt unsettled is nothing to do with the quality of writer/director Dan Lobb’s film. So what is Super Seniors all about? 

It starts off with a group of pre-school age children playing tennis. They are asked how old they think the oldest tennis player is. In the usual way of young kids answers range from 21 to 102.  The lower age is laughable but the higher one isn’t so very far from the truth! A series of cards set the scene…”In tennis when you hit 65 you become a super senior. The oldest category is 85 and older and there is no upper limit. Each year the pinnacle is the World Championships. Making it there is a great achievement but it’s only half the battle.”

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If I’m Not Bleeding Somewhere I Haven’t Played Hard Enough

Throughout the opening scenes and in-between the introductory text cards we are introduced to the main characters that we’ll be following through the film. There is Leonid Stanislavskyi (95), Etty Marouani (82), John Powless (87), and King Van Nostrand (85). They come from different parts of the world and have different levels of experience; fortunately it is an open tournament. There are a lot of other people seen throughout the film, 585 people took part,  but the main commentary follows the four aforementioned players. Dan Lobb has written and shot a film that is both entertaining and illuminating.

Ukranian Leonid is the least experienced having only taken up tennis when he needed company after his wife died when he was 90. Etty, on the over hand, was French Senior Champion. John comes from Illinois and played American football, basketball, and tennis from a young age. King is the most capable tennis player of the four. At the 2022 Super-Seniors World Individual Championships Van Nostrand, then aged 87, achieved a long-held ambition, becoming the outright leader in seniors tennis by winning his record-breaking 43rd world title. John and King also play doubles together.

I Hate Loosing More Than I Like To Win

So why was I feeling so unsettled about watching Super Seniors? I mean, I love documentaries and I used to play tennis so it should be an enjoyable couple of hours. The problem is that I’m of “a certain age” and, as Andrew Marvell put it, feel “at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near”.  Despite that, I would be considered to be a youngster. They were all over eighty while I still have a few years left of my sixties. My concern was that I’d grow attached to these people only to have to read the dreaded “In Memoriam” page as the credits start. This was exacerbated by Leonid coming from the Ukraine which has had more than its fair share of strife recently.

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Hardly surprisingly really, but there is an “In Memoriam” page as the credits start. I’m not going to say who because of spoilerage but it wasn’t who I expected. But that isn’t the only thing that you are wondering about as Super Seniors unwinds. It is a film about tennis. Moreover it is a film about a tennis tournament. Now I’m not the most sporty of chaps but even I know that tennis tournaments consist of matches, which are made up of sets, which are, in turn, made up of games. And that is what helps you get closer to the people from the opening sequence to the “12 months later” round up at the end,  In short, I thoroughly enjoyed this film.

Super Seniors is available on UK digital from 17^th June courtesy of Bohemia Media.

Film Grade: A+