On this day in vegan history · January 19, 2018
The Game Changers Premieres at Sundance
A mixed martial artist sidelined by injury went looking for proof that meat makes you strong, and the documentary he made instead sent a wave of Netflix viewers toward the produce aisle.
The facts
- Premiere
- January 19, 2018, Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah
- Director
- Louie Psihoyos
- Central figure
- James Wilks, mixed martial artist and self defense instructor
- Wider release
- Second edit released worldwide on Netflix, September 2019
James Wilks was a mixed martial artist and self defense instructor whose injury gave him time to dig into whether meat really explained athletic strength. That question became The Game Changers, a documentary directed by Louie Psihoyos that put elite plant-based athletes on screen and argued its case with recovery times and inflammation markers rather than slogans. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on January 19, 2018, with executive producers including James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger attached. A second edit went out worldwide on Netflix in September 2019, carrying the film's core question, what actually makes an athlete strong, to a far bigger audience than any festival crowd.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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The Game Changers debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018, with a second edit released worldwide for a one-day screening in September 2019.
Wikipedia's entry on the film
Source: Wikipedia -
Having suffered an injury he used his downtime to explore the effects of plant-based diets on health, recovery, and athletic performance.
Wikipedia's synopsis, describing James Wilks
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
It took the oldest objection to a plant-based diet, where do you get your strength, and staged it as a testable question in front of a mainstream Netflix audience instead of a niche one.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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