"SAIL"—A FEATURE DOCUMENTARY WITH SINGULAR ACCESS TO THE AMERICA’S CUP—SET TO PREMIERE AT VENICE’S GIORNATE DEGLI AUTORI

The new feature documentary SAIL, co-directed and produced by Academy Award winners Frank Marshall and Evan Hayes about the America’s Cup race, is set to premiere this week in Venice at the festival’s parallel section Giornate degli Autori (GdA) thanks to the support of the Italian Minister of Sport and Youth Andrea Abodi. Produced by Skydance Sports, Louis Vuitton, Kennedy/Marshall, IMAX, and Unreasonable Studios, the film team also includes producers Brent Kunkle, Nan Sandle and Academy Award Winners Jimmy Chin & Chai Vasarhelyi as Executive Producers. For Skydance Sports, producers are Jesse Sisgold, Jon Weinbach, and Dan Marks.

With unprecedented access to one of the most secretive worlds in sport, SAIL goes inside the fiercely guarded America’s Cup, where teams protect closely held information to maintain every competitive edge, capturing sailors, designers, and owners in moments no camera has reached before. Contested by six teams at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars each, the competition—older than the modern Olympics—carries 175 years of history, national pride, extraordinary engineering, and human ambition. As they say, “in this race, there is no second.”

Filmed over two years, SAIL documents the sailors, designers, team principals, and owners of Emirates Team New Zealand, INEOS Britannia, Alinghi Red Bull Racing, NYYC American Magic, Orient Express Racing Team, and Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli.

Shot with IMAX-certified digital cameras from onboard the boats and in the middle of the fleet, SAIL puts audiences in the cockpit of the fastest class of sailing yachts ever built: Machines engineered with Formula 1 technology on the razor’s edge, reaching speeds in excess of 100 km/h, where a single gust of wind can swing the lead and one mistake can capsize a boat in seconds. It’s racing captured with a visceral, in-your-face immediacy never before brought to the sport.

The film focuses on five key characters with everything at stake:

• Sir Ben Ainslie (INEOS Britannia, Great Britain): The most decorated Olympic sailor in history, mounting his third campaign for the Cup. After 173 years without a British win, this may be his last chance to prove he can lead a team, not just sail for one.
• Max Sirena (Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, Italy): A veteran of seven campaigns, sailing for his country and for Prada’s Patrizio Bertelli, who has backed five previous bids without a win. For Sirena, this one is personal: a final chance to bring the Cup home before possibly walking away from the sport for good.
• Terry Hutchinson (NYYC American Magic, USA): Still carrying the weight of a heartbreaking capsize and near-drowning that cost his team the last Cup in 2021 when they appeared unstoppable. Hutchinson returns with America’s long Cup drought on his shoulders, and nothing left to lose.
• Grant Dalton (Emirates Team New Zealand): The two-time defending champion and one of the most fiercely competitive and divisive figures in the sport, chasing a historic third consecutive win—and determined to do whatever it takes to keep the Cup in New Zealand.
• Ernesto Bertarelli (Alinghi Red Bull Racing, Switzerland): Two-time winner of the America’s Cup in 2003 and 2007, for land-locked Switzerland, before bitter defeat in a Deed of Gift Match, Bertarelli knows what it takes to win and the agony of losing the greatest prize in international sports.

Marzio Perrelli, CEO of the America’s Cup Partnership added: “SAIL reveals the America’s Cup as it has never been seen before. Behind the speed, the technology and the spectacle is an extraordinary human story of ambition, obsession, pressure and the relentless pursuit of victory. The film takes audiences inside that world, closer than ever to the people who put everything on the line for the chance to win the oldest and most coveted trophy in international sport.”

SAIL will premiere on 11 September 2026 in Venice, and then play at additional festivals to be announced.

ABOUT SKYDANCE SPORTS
Skydance Sports is the industry-leading sports content studio behind critically acclaimed films and series including the Golden Globe-nominated Air (Amazon), America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys (Netflix), Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants (HBO), Emmy-nominated Rafa (Netflix), and docuseries The Dynasty: UConn Huskies (Apple TV). Upcoming projects include Hulu drama series The Land from Dan Fogelman and Mr. Irrelevant, a theatrical film with Paramount Pictures.

ABOUT UNREASONABLE STUDIOS
UNR is a multi-faceted production company and creative studio working across original film and television, documentary, branded entertainment, creator content, digital/social, production and post. UNR's credits include the Academy Award, BAFTA and Emmy-winning film Free Solo, the BAFTA & Emmy-nominated film Becoming Cousteau, the Emmy-nominated film The Way I See It, the Hulu scripted series Maggie, the Netflix top-10 films The Truth & Tragedy of Moriah Wilson and Buried, and Stacy Peralta's surf epic The Yin & Yang of Gerry Lopez. Upcoming projects include Learning to Fly made in partnership with Chris Hemsworth's Wild State for Amazon Prime and the scripted film Baja 1000 with Angel Manuel Soto directing and Diego Luna starring.

ABOUT KENNEDY/MARSHAL
Established in 1991 by veteran producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, The Kennedy/Marshall Company is behind award-winning films THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, LINCOLN, and SULLY as well as blockbuster franchises INDIANA JONES, JURASSIC WORLD, and JASON BOURNE to name a few.

The Documentary Division was created to tell non-fiction stories with the same passion and expertise. While currently producing a documentary feature on the iconic rock-pop band Fleetwood Mac and a multi-part series on the legendary Barbra Streisand, Kennedy/Marshall’s past projects include SINATRA: ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL (HBO), Emmy-winning docuseries LAUREL CANYON: A PLACE IN TIME (MGM+), Emmy-winning films THE BEE GEES: HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART (HBO), THE BEACH BOYS (DISNEY+) and THE REDEEM TEAM (NETFLIX), Grammy-winning documentary JAZZ FEST: A NEW ORLEANS STORY, and most recently THE SLIGHTEST TOUCH (HBO) premiering fall 2026.

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