The trailer for a new documentary about Terry Fox featuring “never-before-seen” footage was released today, one month ahead of its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Using nearly 100 reels of recently recovered archival footage, Run Terry Run promises an inside look at the British Columbia athlete and cancer research advocate’s 1980 Marathon of Hope.
The trailer features dialogue and commentary from van driver and friend Doug Alward, Terry Fox’s younger brother Darrell Fox, and Terry Fox himself as the 21-year-old attempted to run across Canada to raise money for cancer research after his leg was amputated due to osteogenic sarcoma.
“I think of home a lot. I think of running into Vancouver … where I’m going to finish on the ocean,” Fox is heard saying in the trailer.
“To me, I’m happy doing what I’m doing — I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. And so I’m going to keep on going.”
Toronto director Sean Menard recovered the raw footage from filmmaker John Simpson, who filmed Fox’s run with multiple camera operators starting on the East Coast.
Simpson made his own 1981 CBC-sponsored documentary, Terry Fox: I Had A Dream, but he believed the remaining footage had been thrown away, according to an interview Menard did with the Globe and Mail.
Menard, who previously made the self-funded MuchMusic documentary 299 Queen Street West, was inspired to search for first-hand documentation of Fox’s marathon due to the limited amount of high-quality footage available. Aided by the Terry Fox Foundation, he discovered the footage in a Toronto storage unit a few blocks from his own home.
He subsequently restored the reels of film to 4K quality and used it to make his film, which he first screened at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall last year.
According to a Canadian Running review of that screening, the documentary features no “talking head” interviews, instead using voiceovers from Alward, Darrell Fox and two others: Leslie Scrivener, the first journalist to cover the Marathon of Hope; and Darryl Sittler, the then-captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs who ran alongside Terry from Scarborough to Nathan Phillips Square.
Fox began his marathon April 12, 1980, roughly three years after learning of his cancer diagnosis. His original goal was to run from St. John’s to Victoria. He made it 5,373 kilometres before being forced to cut his attempt short near Thunder Bay, Ont., after the cancer spread to his lungs.
Though Fox died in 1981, his marathon raised more than $24 million at the time — $1 for every Canadian. Earlier this year, the Terry Fox Foundation announced it had surpassed $1 billion in funds raised for cancer research.
Fox has been the subject of numerous documentaries before — from Simpson’s film, to 1983’s The Terry Fox Story, to Into the Wind, an episode of ESPN’s 30 For 30 series released in 2010.
In 2024, the Bank of Canada announced Fox’s image would appear on the country’s next $5 bank note.
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In 2025, Menard told The Canadian Press that his film captures “the evolution of a 21-year-old,” starting when Fox was a less-confident runner simply propelled by a grand idea.
It eventually finds him as a young man learning to manage the international spotlight while pushing his limits.
An original score for the documentary was recorded by U.S. composer Tom Caffey, who previously worked on the Michael Jordan Netflix docuseries The Last Dance.
Run Terry Run will premiere at TIFF on Sept. 19, one day before the 46th annual Terry Fox Run. It is scheduled for a theatrical release on Oct. 9, 2026.
