WINNER TAKE NOTHING Documentaries

In 1984 Margaux Hemingway
and her husband, Bernard Foucher, set
out to make a documentary about her
grandfather Ernest Hemingway. It
was to be a lighthearted adventure,
visiting Ernest’s watering holes and
meeting and interviewing his friends.
The search took them from the Ritz in
Paris to the canals of Venice and the
bull rings of Pamplona. But
Hemingway was never discussed in
her family except as a distant icon.
His suicide was treated as a gun
accident – a family secret. In the
course of making the film, Margaux
comes face to face not only with her
grandfather’s brilliance as a writer,
but she also learns about his struggles
with alcohol and depression, and her
family’s dark legacy. Soon the
adventure becomes a nightmare as
Margaux learns that her grandfather’s
past also holds the key to her own
future.
This is a film about the making
of a film; about fame and unfulfilled
expectations, manic highs, and deep
depressions, art and alcohol and
ultimately death and suicide. This is a
powerful statement about inescapable
destiny.