{"id":610251,"date":"2026-08-31T14:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T14:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610251\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T14:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T14:44:12","slug":"watch-clip-from-sumo-spirit-weighs-nothing-premiering-in-venice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/610251\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Clip From ‘Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing,’ Premiering in Venice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Thunderous applause may greet one documentary premiering at the Venice Film Festival<\/a>, fitting for a story of athletes who shake the earth with every footfall.<\/p>\n

\n\tSumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing<\/a>, directed by Erik Shirai<\/a>, goes inside the ring and the training room with champions of the traditional Japanese sport and aspirants hoping one day to achieve the top ranks. Perhaps no film has ever provided such an intimate view into the physical and mental demands of sumo, and how deeply it reflects Japanese values and culture.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe have your exclusive first look at the documentary in the clip below. The film from ESPN<\/a>\u2019s 30 For 30 premieres Wednesday night in Venice.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe filmmaker, who\u2019s from a Japanese American family, became familiar with sumo as a child.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI grew up always having it around,\u201d Shirai recalls. \u201cIf I went to my grandmother\u2019s house, it would just be on in the background\u2026 It was always playing on TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it wasn\u2019t until the documentary project came about in 2019 that Shirai truly immersed himself in the sport. He would soon discover how punishing it is \u2013 not only the brutally difficult training regimen, but the violence of the contact when two sumo wrestlers hurl themselves at each other<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Sumo:<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tESPN<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you ever go see sumo at a training session, the first thing you\u2019ll notice is the sound, that you\u2019ve never heard or you rarely hear, which is like a bone-crushing kind of body slam, like flesh on flesh,\u201d Shirai tells Deadline. \u201cBecause when they collide, often their forehead hits. So, you hear the almost head-to-head collision, like a thump\u2026 If you can imagine two animals with horns colliding\u2026 it makes you just look away at first if you\u2019re not used to it and you\u2019re just going, \u2018Oh, that can\u2019t be good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe continues, \u201cA lot of them obviously have concussions and everybody does this thing [in training] where they bang their heads against each other or on a big piece of wood to create a callus on their forehead\u2026 It\u2019s just crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPart of a sumo\u2019s training involves massive calorie consumption to become as sizable as possible and thus very hard to move in the ring. (Konishiki, the American-born sumo who reached the second highest rank in the sport, topped out at a weight of 633 lbs. or 287 kg). The object of the sport is to push or toss an opponent out of the ring or get them to touch a body part, other than the feet, to the floor first.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou build your body in a certain way that makes it more difficult for opponents to do that. And the challenge is that building yourself to become this huge 200- 300-kilo guy, I think that\u2019s the biggest thing,\u201d Shirai observes. \u201cI don\u2019t think that most foreigners understand that, how difficult that is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSurprisingly, though, the film shows sumo has no weight categories.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou can be fighting someone that can be two, three times bigger than you,\u201d Shirai notes. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s what makes the human spirit become so much more prominent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong the competitors documented in the film is 15-year-old Kosei, who tips the scales at a mere 154 lbs. (70 kg). Remarkably, he can hold his own against giants.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe has to be able to use other tactics,\u201d says Shirai, \u201cbe quick and swift and find other ways to use his agility and speed and his frame to work against bigger opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShirai takes a striking visual approach with his film, shooting it in lustrous light and kind of sepia tones.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to make it feel sort of nostalgic and timeless,\u201d he explains. \u201cSumo\u2019s been around for thousands of years, but yet very little has changed while the rest of the world has extraordinarily changed. So, I kind of wanted to make a film that felt like it was sort of frozen in time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Sumo:<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tESPN<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sport, to the outsider, may seem quaint or perhaps embarrassing in that competitors wear very little when they wrestle.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou\u2019re basically half naked, you have to wear these loin cloths,\u201d Shirai points out. \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody would think of sumo as a physically appealing thing \u2014 or most people wouldn\u2019t, maybe. But if you actually watched them and if you went to a training session, you would see how incredibly athletic they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Erik Shirai<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tErikShirai.com<\/p>\n

\n\tLooks, Shirai affirms, can be deceiving. \u201cThe misconception is that [people] think sumo is for fat people \u2013 \u2018They built a sport for fat people\u2019 \u2014 but it\u2019s quite the opposite\u2026 They\u2019re more athletic than I think most football players are\u2026 [NFL great] Micah Parsons went over to a [sumo] stable and he couldn\u2019t push this little, small junior wrestler even an inch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe adds, \u201cI think that [people] more and more are realizing if you get past the physical look of it, you realize that these are true athletes that have built their bodies in such a way that allows them to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor many top American athletes, boastfulness is de rigueur. \u00a0That\u2019s anathema in sumo and Japanese culture generally.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI felt growing up, there was this huge misconception about Asian culture \u2014 maybe it\u2019s exotified or maybe it\u2019s misinterpreted,\u201d Shirai observes. \u201cOften what\u2019s misinterpreted about Japanese is the respect and tradition and what it means to be reserved and restrained, which is so the opposite of Americans. I feel Americans in general are like, \u2018I\u2019m the best, I\u2019m the greatest, no one can beat me.\u2019 It\u2019s about trash talking. It\u2019s all about that. It\u2019s got to be out on the surface, and everybody needs to know that you\u2019re the best. And it\u2019s quite the opposite with Japanese. That was something that I wanted to [show] in this film, using sumo\u2026 this sort of physical stigma, this idea that the way something looks is not what it actually is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShirai says it\u2019s about it\u2019s about \u201cwhat true strength means, which is something often you can\u2019t see with your eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Venice<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenice Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Venice, Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing will play at other film festivals (the director wasn\u2019t at liberty to disclose which ones). The film will premiere on ESPN in 2027. It\u2019s produced by Carolyn Hepburn for ESPN\/Disney; Teddy Leifer and Sam Stanley for Rise Films; Sigrid Dyekjaer for Real Lava, and Yusuke Kamata for Generation 11.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe clip below gives a good sense of the ins and outs of sumo competition, and the stunning visual appeal of the documentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Thunderous applause may greet one documentary premiering at the Venice Film Festival, fitting for a story of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,258650,20544,61,60,270,258651,802],"class_list":["post-610251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-erik-shirai","tag-espn","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-sumo-spirit-weighs-nothing","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}