The Lionheart

In the sport of IndyCar racing, there was little Dan Wheldon hadn’t achieved. The British-born driver — winner of the IndyCar Series Drivers’ Championship, key member of a winning team at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and two-time victor of the Indianapolis 500 — was a tremendous racer. He was gregarious and confident, yet also self-effacing. He was a man deeply devoted to his wife, Susie, and two young sons, and widely respected and well liked throughout the sport. His death in 2011 at an event in Las Vegas shook motorsports to its core. Ten years later, Susie Wheldon still finds herself at the racetrack every weekend. Except now she’s there to support her sons, Sebastian and Oliver, as they follow in their father’s on-track footsteps. Laura Brownson’s The Lionheart is a sensitively observed and deeply felt documentary, one that is at once a portrait of Dan Wheldon himself, a testament to the strength and resilience of Susie Wheldon, and an exploration of the generational reverberations that bind fathers and sons. But perhaps most impactfully, it’s a look at how both honoring a legacy and working through grief can happen by adopting a view loved by a father: the racetrack from behind the wheel of a car. (Tribeca Film Festival)