Synopsis
Imagine a bad news. The type that calls everything into question. This, is what happened to Olivier Goy in December, 2020. Within the space of a sentence, the diagnosis is delivered: he has about 3 years to live and no treatment.
Even so, Olivier proved to be larger than life, and ignored the countdown. He intends to live his life to the fullest, enjoy every minute.
We follow his new daily life, as a committed entrepreneur passionate about technology, as a family man keen to preserve his cocoon, and as a patient with an incurable disease.
We also accompany him on a committed photographic project. This passionate photographer aims to shed light on his illness and disability to raise awareness of how others see him and how he sees himself. This is an opportunity to accompany him on a series of deeply meaningful portraits and meetings from Paris to Normandy, Amsterdam and Antarctica, from photographer and academician Sebastião Salgado to 2020 Dakar winner Axel Alletru and Miss France 2010 Malika Menard. These are just some of the endearing personalities who have faced up to tribulations with an unwavering smile and a winning mindset.
Intimate encounters with the monk Matthieu Ricard and the rabbi Delphine Horvilleur to reflect on the meaning of life and death with those who think about them on a daily basis.
The aim is to awaken consciousness and question the judgement of others and of ourselves. More broadly, others’ gaze on us and our own is something we can all relate to, disabled or not. INVICINBLE SUMMER’s discussion of disability and illness is a pretext to speak to a wider audience about our tendency to undermine our own life due to misguided views on everyday problems.
INVICINBLE SUMMER is clearly an ode to life and love. Nothing gloomy. Beauty, laughter, a few tears at times, but above all a furious desire to live.
A committed project
All proceeds from this project shall be donated to the Paris Brain Institute, located at the Pitié Salpétrière hospital in Paris, for ALS research. Olivier already supports the Institute where he is a major donor. You can make a tax-free donation directly here. More than $1,500,000 have already been collected.
In addition, co-producers Mediawan and Olivier Goy are committed to donating all profits from the film to the Institute.
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Olivier Goy has a passion for photography and, with his wife Virginie, founded the Photo4food foundation (housed at the Institut de France) with the purpose of combating poverty in France through photography.
In December 2020, Olivier was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. This is a fatal orphan neurodegenerative disease that results in progressive paralysis of the muscles involved in voluntary motor function. It also affects phonation and swallowing. However, patients are left with full intellectual capacity.
Aged 47, he decided to take on this battle in the full light of day. He spoke about it for the first time in a long podcast (Generation Do It Yourself - Matthieu Stefani) where for 90 minutes he exposed his determination to fight the disease and live his life to the fullest. The episode having had astonishing twists and turns, he now wants to continue his fight against the disease with the film INVINCIBLE ÉTÉ, directed by Stéphanie Pillonca. After its cinema release in France in May 2023, the documentary has embarked on an international career (Spain, UK, Madagascar, Japan, USA...).
Married, father of 2, he is still an entrepreneur. He is a knight in the National Order of Merit, a knight in the Legion of Honor and an ambassador for the Paris Brain Institute.