An Authorized Lazarus Lake Documentary Premieres During UTMB Week

Gary Cantrell, the race director better known as Lazarus Lake, has spent decades building events designed to defeat nearly everyone who starts them. A documentary made with his cooperation, The Hillbilly Scientist, will have its world premiere on Aug. 27 in Chamonix, during the week the sport gathers for the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, its largest race and its busiest commercial showcase.

The film comes from the British production company Mellor&Smith, co-directed by Paul Mellor and Luke Jarmey and made in association with the running-shoe brand Mount to Coast and the French trail brand Raidlight. The crew spent about a year around Cantrell and roughly 20 days filming, the production said: at the Barkley Marathons in Tennessee, at his last-runner-standing race, Big’s Backyard Ultra, and at his home with his wife, Sandra. It also walked with him for seven days along U.S. Route 50 in Nevada, the stretch promoted as the loneliest road in America, during his recent trek across the country.

Cantrell has been on screen before. The 2014 film The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young introduced a wide audience to his best-known event. Mellor&Smith bills The Hillbilly Scientist as the only authorized documentary about Cantrell himself, made with access to the man rather than the race, reaching into his early life, his runaway years, and what the production describes as near-death experiences in his teens.

The interview list doubles as a recent history of the Barkley. Jasmin Paris, who in 2024 became the first woman ever to finish the race, reaching the final gate in 59:58:21 with 99 seconds to spare on the 60-hour cutoff, appears in the film, alongside John Kelly, a multiple finisher who placed second that year, in a record edition that produced five finishers. So does Mathieu Blanchard, the runner-up at the 2022 UTMB, whose first Barkley attempt in February 2026 ended when he stopped midway through the third loop in the cold. No one finished the 2026 race, the second year running that the course went unbeaten.

The film’s argument, according to its makers, is that Cantrell has protected something the rest of the sport has spent years making smoother and easier to sell. “Meaning comes from the struggle, not the outcome,” Mellor said in the announcement. “Laz is preserving something older and rarer: a way to test yourself that can’t be faked, marketed, or outsourced.”

The claim is being made at the sport’s most commercial address. UTMB week is the trail calendar’s largest gathering, and the premiere is a red-carpet screening co-produced by two brands whose shoes and gear ultrarunners buy.

The screening is set for 4 p.m. on Aug. 27 at the Cinema Vox in central Chamonix, followed by a 30-minute audience question session with Cantrell and Mellor. It is open by invitation and media accreditation only, in a small venue.

Mellor&Smith has not announced a public release or streaming plan for the film beyond the single Chamonix screening.