Hulu and ESPN announced that the new ESPN documentary film The Endless Race premieres Thursday, Oct. 29, on Hulu in the U.S. The film will air Sunday, Nov. 1, at 2 p.m. ET on ESPN and stream afterward on the ESPN App later that day. The television airing coincides with ESPN’s live coverage of the New York City Marathon earlier that day.
SYNOPSIS: Her brother had been sober for nearly four years. She thought he was finally in the clear. But when filmmaker Jen Karson-Strauss discovers he’s relapsed, her world fractures, leaving her to confront the grief, fear, and relentless uncertainty of loving someone with a history of substance use.
Searching for a way through her own isolation, Jen turns to the one thing she knows how to do: make a film. Determined to humanize a crisis so often buried beneath shame and statistics, she begins filming recovering addicts and their families as they train for the New York City Marathon. What she doesn’t expect is how much their stories will begin to echo her own.
As the marathon draws closer, so does the emotional weight of the journey. Each runner’s path toward the start line reveals what they are running toward, what they are running from, and what they are still trying to make peace with. And as Jen witnesses their struggles, setbacks, resilience, and relationships, her own story begins to surface. The boundaries between filmmaker and subject blur, forcing her to confront the ways addiction has shaped her own family.
All roads lead to race day. At the starting line of the New York City Marathon, the runners arrive with the weight of everything they’ve confronted along the way. What begins as a film about recovery becomes a personal reckoning; a journey toward acceptance, forgiveness, and the fragile hope that healing, like sobriety, is a race that never truly ends.
CREDITS: The Endless Race is produced by ESPN, directed and produced by Emmy-winning ESPN director Jen Karson-Strauss. Co-producer Jeremy Williams. Coordinating producers Eric Neel, Rayna Banks. Executive Producer Chris Buckle.
Media contact: Andy Hall – andy.hall@espn.com