26/02/2025 - We met with the authors and directors of the documentary about Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx, a study of an extraordinary hero

A documentary wholly composed of archive footage, Merckx [+see also:
film review
interview: Boris Tilquin and Christoph…
film profile] presents itself as a biopic on Belgian cyclist Eddy Merckx, focusing on both the genius and the resilience of this champion. And this study of an extraordinary hero also sheds light on his country and his sport. The film is released in Belgium today, 26 February, courtesy of O’Brother.

Cineuropa: Merckx is composed exclusively of archive footage. Could you tell us how you went about making it?
Boris Tilquin: Our idea was to make a film with different perspectives and viewpoints, so as to paint a portrait with intersecting impressions, sensations and memories, carried by multiple voices and multiple sources. We watched hundreds of hours of material and used footage hailing from 30 different countries. We chose it in such a way that we’d be able to tell the story we had in our heads. We wanted to turn Merckx into our very own "Rocky", a boxer who takes a lot of blows and who falls, but who ultimately gets back up again and goes on to become an icon.

What did he represent for you, before you started telling his story?
Christophe Hermans: He’s a childhood hero of ours. When we were small, we’d pretend we were Eddy Merckx. Merckx is a powerful popular figure who people from all kinds of backgrounds could relate to. You just had to stand on the side of the road during one of his races; you could almost touch him, feel him. He was accessible, in a certain sense. He became a legend throughout the whole of Belgium, a trans-generational hero.

How do you work with the story of a national hero? Did you feel a sense of responsibility?
CH: I think we work with idols by showing their different sides and by looking for their ambiguities, as we would with any kind of fictional character. We had to drill down into Merckx’s trajectory to find the various elements which resonated with us, especially when it came to his relationship with his father. They had a special relationship; Eddy probably had ADHD and his father was quite harsh with him. Eddy was determined to prove to his dad that he could be proud of him. That intimacy makes the story universal. And, as he’s a legend, we try to understand how he was raised, how he evolved, how he became a champion, and also how he fell.

BT: Ultimately, it’s through sporting events that we get to know this man, like a portrait painted in the negative or in the background. What we didn’t want to make was a film about sport. We wanted to make a film about a social body; in other words, Eddy’s body, which takes part in sporting events but which also tells us something about who he is and where he comes from, and which additionally tells us about Belgium. Behind Eddy’s story is an exploration of the position of women in the 1970s, community problems in Belgium, and the role played by the media too, who’ve helped to create an icon but who’ve also made it possible to hate him.

On that note, the film explores an era when cycling was very different.
BT: What interested us about cycling at that time was its brutal, dangerous side. People rode without helmets; we see Eddy flying down passes at 80 kilometres an hour. He had some spectacular falls. It takes us back to a time when cycling was basically an extreme sport. In fact, Eddy Merckx came close to dying.

How did you structure the film’s narrative, which is interwoven with archive footage and off-the-record interviews?
CH: We used Senna [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Asif Kapadia as our reference, the director who was also behind Amy [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Diego Maradona [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Asif Kapadia
film profile]. We wanted to make an immersive film. We’d written a screenplay beforehand, and we looked for footage to fit with that. Then we re-wrote it; we wanted to make him relatable by speaking to people who knew Merckx throughout his career, especially during the golden era of the first Tour de France races. Then we decided to remove the sound from our original footage in order to re-create it. The aim was to get inside of him. We hired an actor to recreate his breathing, to lend sound to his body, in some way.

BT: Eddy Merckx is an incredible character. Everything about his life would make a good fiction film. It was all there, ready to go, like a real-life film script, with climaxes, twists… We don’t understand why there hasn’t been a documentary about him before this one, or even a fiction film. This man tells us a lot about Belgium, about our history, our memory. There’s been both comedy and tragedy in his life, as in all human lives.

What was the greatest challenge you encountered with this project?
CH: It was mainly managing to condense Eddy Merckx’s life and career into just one and a half hours, because he won 525 races. It was a huge challenge from a writing perspective. And it was also important to us that the film was credible in the eyes of cycling fans, as well as being accessible to those who know nothing about it. And it needed to be a proper cinematic film, in the knowledge that it would also be shown on TV and to a very large audience.

(Translated from French)