“You have to live for now”: In Freefall, Aria Shahrokhshahi follows a 62-year-old skydiver as she prepares for her next jump

The British-Iranian filmmaker and photographer Aria Shahrokhshahi got into both of his lens-based practices for the same reason. His journey comes from a certain “nosiness” he possesses, an overwhelming “curiosity for people” and their stories, and he often moves between the two disciplines to be able to tell them. “Whether I decide that something’s going to be a film or a photo project really just depends on the subject matter and what I feel is the best vehicle for telling that story,” he says.

In a recent film project Freefall, Aria told the story of 62-year-old skydiver, doctor and beekeeper Ruth, documenting her reflections on making your own way in life, defying limits and committing to new adventures, as she prepares for her next jump out of the sky – which the film gloriously ends on. The filmmaker directed the short as part of a four-part series of films commissioned by Selfridges New Age series, which aims to shed light on the stories that mark youth, adolescence and adulthood, inviting four different filmmakers to contribute to “a chronology of life and experience”.

When Aria got the email about the project he was shooting stills on the upcoming Aidan Zamiri-directed Charlie XCX film The Moment. On receiving the brief, Aria says: “I loved the idea, that it was chapters with different directors and everyone’s coming at it from a different place with different life experience,” so he decided to go ahead and pitch a film.

Aria’s initial idea for the project was something that arose from the filmmaker’s humanitarian aid work in Ukraine over the last three years, where he met a 60-year-old ex-military Parachute regiment soldier Paul while rebuilding homes for people affected by Russia’s invasion in the East of the country. Working for the airborne regiment of the British army when he was younger, Paul now works as a general contractor, “but he still parachutes all the time” Aria explains. “He told me about how he goes all around the world, and has a huge community of people and that’s his passion. I just thought it was so amazing, not only that, he’s breaking that stereotype of what a 60-year-old does.”

So when the opportunity to work with Selfridges on their New Age series emerged, Aria put forward the idea of shooting a short documentary on a skydiver or a parachute jumper, before spending a good deal of time on facebook with the films producer to search for skydivers over the age of 60. Low and behold, he found a facebook group dedicated to this very particular group of sportspeople.

The pair put a post up and a bunch of people got back to them, “but when we met Ruth we instantly just knew that she was the one”, Aria shares, “so we jumped on a call with her and listened to her story and the way she came to skydiving and what she’s done since then. She didn’t take herself too seriously, even though she’s achieved such amazing things in her life. I thought the opportunity to be able to tell her story was a real honour.”

To make the most of Ruth’s very British sense of humour, right from the outset Aria wanted the short to have an element of unseriousness, not necessarily a comedy per say, but the kind of documentary where humour is captured in amongst the mundane and everyday: “Like, when Ruth’s looking for a bee tool, and she goes ‘shit, where’s my hive tool’”, the director says. A natural in front of the lens, the team would often just roll the camera and let Ruth go. “I’d kind of ask leading questions for the shots,” Aria says, “but always leave a lot of room for her to fill in the gaps.”

The resulting film is a wonderfully candid depiction of the skydiver’s adventurous and enriching everyday life – a reminder, in-action, that “life is precious, and you’ve got to make it count.” On the films messaging Aria ends: “I hope what people learn from Ruth is what I learned from spending time with her, which is that an attitude is a position on a person, place, or thing and we cannot control how we feel, but we can control our attitude, and we can control our position. Ruth has chosen to have such a beautiful outlook on life and hasn’t let getting older stop her from doing anything. I think it's really all quite inspirational.”