Kicking + Screening Soccer Film Festival Roundup

What is it about soccer that makes it such a great subject for filmmakers? Its near-universal popularity ensures that any film about soccer is guaranteed to find an audience, but it is more than that; for some reason, soccer seems to lend itself better to a dramatic arc than any other sport out there. Is it the deceptive simplicity of the game, often culminating in a one-on-one standoff between striker and keeper to rival the best shootouts from classic Westerns? Is it the promise, straight out of Horatio Alger, that even the poorest child from the most insignificant village can become a hero to millions if he or she has the ability and the work ethic? Is it the global nature of the way the sport can bring people together in appreciation of a great goal or in horror at a devastating injury?

Needless to say, there are many remarkable films focused on soccer for a multitude of very good reasons. And every year, the Kicking + Screening Soccer Film Festival curates a diverse selection of the best and gives the soccer-mad community in New York something else to bond over besides the results of last weekend’s games. Indeed, Kicking + Screening brings together fans of different teams who rarely cross paths except to yell so-called “banter” at each other, and allows them to put their differences aside in favor of a mutual love of the beautiful game on the big screen.

This year marked the 10th Annual Kicking + Screening Soccer Film Festival, and for a soccer-obsessed film critic like myself, it was heaven. Festival co-founders Rachel Markus and Greg Lalas curated a great selection of films from around the world that not only told great soccer stories but great stories, full stop. From a women’s soccer team in Sweden to a young American player in Iceland, from a Brazilian team struck down by tragedy to a group of American fans in Latin America for a good time, the films at this year’s festival were incredibly different, but if you’re a fan of film or soccer – or both – it is impossible not to find things to like in all of them.

Football for Better or Worse (Inger Molin)

Women’s soccer has brought the United States its only moments of glory on the world stage, and yet even in this country women soccer players struggle to get the same treatment as their male counterparts. If women soccer players in the United States must fight to get to play on the same grass surfaces, receive the same meal stipends, and get the same media attention as the men, one can only imagine the struggle inherent in being a woman soccer player in another country, where one cannot point to three shiny Women’s World Cup trophies as part of one’s argument in favor of equality.

That struggle is presented in both hopeful and heartbreaking fashion in Inger Molin’s feature documentary Football for Better or Worse, which chronicles a season in the life of one of the most storied clubs in international women’s soccer: FC Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden. Rosengård have won the Swedish title a record 10 times and regularly compete in the European Champions League. Yet they suffer to stay afloat economically in a world where the winner of the men’s Champions League title gets 99.8% of UEFA’s allotted budget for the competition, according to Rosengård’s managing director Klas Tjebbes: a whopping 1.25 billion Euro compared to the women’s paltry 2.1 million Euro.

Despite this disturbing financial disparity and a variety of other obstacles on and off the football pitch, Tjebbes and the rest of the Rosengård team are passionate about their role in the Malmö community – they even connect people with jobs through an employment service they started – and about inspiring young girls to play soccer. At the start of the 2015-2016 season chronicled in Football for Better or Worse, iconic Swedish soccer player Therese Sjögran decides to retire from playing and step into the Rosengård front office as the new sporting director. It is primarily through her eyes that the audience witnesses the highs and lows of Rosengård’s season, and Sjögran holds nothing back, describing with no-nonsense honesty challenges such as becoming the boss of her former teammates, dealing with young players who don’t trust her, and longing to get back out on the pitch during those epic Champions League nights.

Sjögran is a great protagonist, her utter frankness (not to mention her love of video games) making her relatable despite her legendary status. This is both the blessing and the curse of women’s football: the women are forced to stay humble even after achieving greatness on par with Messi and Ronaldo because they know that unlike these male superstars, they cannot take their fleeting careers for granted. As we see the women muse throughout Football for Better or Worse, they need to have backup careers planned out for when they retire; there is no way any of them are retiring on a women soccer player’s salary, even if they reach the pinnacle of the women’s game.

One of the greatest soccer players in the world of any gender is Marta. The Brazilian was named the best player in the world five consecutive times, and in Football for Better or Worse, we find her plying her trade at Rosengård. Marta too is brutally honest with the camera, telling us how everyone back home in Brazil assumes “Marta’s got it made.” She’s lucky enough to have been able to buy her mother a bigger house, she notes, but that’s about it. Marta has been compared to the legendary Pelé by Pelé himself, but in this film, we see a humble and hilariously funny soccer player who does not strut around with an ego to match her talent. She gets her teammates relaxed before big games by joking around on the bus and comforts them after heartbreaking losses by leading singalongs on her guitar.

Football for Better or Worse presents a Marta who is even more admirable than the one you’re likely already familiar with (or at least you should be); part of that can be chalked up to Marta naturally having great character, but one cannot help but think that another part of it is due to her having spent her life managing career struggles that she would never have had to deal with had she been born a man. For these reasons, Football for Better or Worse is an incredibly inspirational film, but it is also a frustrating one. These women should not have to deal with the kinds of economic obstacles that their equivalents in the men’s game are blissfully free from worrying about. It is impossible not to get fired up watching the women of Rosengård plow on through the difficulties for the sake of following their dreams and showing little girls that they too can own the pitch, but one cannot help but wonder when they’ll finally have to stop dealing with those difficulties at all.

Messi & Me (Renny Maslow)

Imagine getting the privilege to play in a soccer game opposite one of the world’s greatest players, Lionel Messi. Pretty intimidating, right? Now, imagine scoring the most brilliant goal of your life during that game from a bicycle kick. Sounds like a soccer fairy tale, doesn’t it? But this is no made-up story to inspire youth soccer players; it’s the true story of what happened to former college soccer star Matt Eliason. Renny Maslow’s short documentary Messi & Me documents not only how Eliason found himself on the field during that fateful game but everything that happened to him afterward. The result is a frank and funny look at one young man’s unlikely journey to pro soccer.

Eliason was a star for Northwestern, scoring more goals than any other player in the university’s history, but found himself unable to make the leap into playing professionally for a variety of reasons. However, when a team set to play opposite Messi in a friendly match in Chicago found itself short on players, the coach called up Eliason and some of his Northwestern teammates to see if they were interested in lacing up their boots once again. Despite varying levels of fitness, it was the kind of opportunity to which none of them could say no. And despite not having played soccer in months, Eliason found himself stealing the spotlight from Messi himself by scoring a remarkable bicycle kick goal.

The fame that resulted from “that goal” earned Eliason a better-late-than-never entry into the professional game with a contract offer from a team in Iceland. Messi & Me follows Eliason across the pond and chronicles his attempts to overcome cultural differences and unlucky injuries to succeed on the field. It’s a straightforward, no-frills look at a side of professional soccer we don’t often see – one that is more gritty than glamorous, and often quite lonely too. Eliason is a witty and charismatic subject whose struggles on and off the pitch remind you that the players who take the field for your favorite teams are only human after all. His journey shows that taking a risk and following your dreams can change your life for the better, even if those dreams don’t come true in the way you always imagined.

At the festival screening, Messi & Me was paired with what was by far the festival’s most memorable short, Jeremie Laurent’s Boniek et Platini. This 23-minute period drama follows two young Polish boys during the 1980 World Cup as they attempt to get their official match ball back from the cruel militiamen who have confiscated it. The film combines nostalgia for one’s own childhood innocence with the sadness of that moment when the veil of that innocence is abruptly ripped away and the disappointment of the real world is laid bare. It’s a bittersweet combination that causes Boniek et Platini to linger in your mind long after the end credits have rolled.

Nossa Chape (Jeff Zimbalist & Michael Zimbalist)

On November 28, 2016, a chartered flight carrying the Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense to the first leg of their Copa Sudamericana final in Medellín, Colombia ran out of fuel and crashed into the mountains. Of the 77 passengers – players, team administrators, and reporters – only six survived. The feature documentary Nossa Chape tells the story of how Chapecoense struggled to rebuild after suffering from such a horrific tragedy. Directed by Jeff Zimbalist and Michael Zimbalist, whose previous soccer-related credits include The Two Escobars and Pelé: Birth of a Legend, it is a tale of unimaginable grief and resilience that is guaranteed to break your heart.

Among the participants in the film are the three surviving Chapecoense players, whose terrifying accounts of the crash will send shivers down your spine. Two of them, defenders Neto and Alan Ruschel, must overcome grievous injuries in order to have any hope of playing soccer again, while the third, goalkeeper Jakson Follman, is forced to contemplate a new life after having one of his legs amputated. But the good feelings elicited by the survivors’ gratitude to Chapecoense for standing by them during their recoveries are tempered by the suspicion that the club is not doing enough for the wives whose husbands died in the crash. Several Chapecoense widows – many of whom are incredibly young, with young children – appear in Nossa Chape and share their grief as well as their anger over what they feel is Chapecoense’s attempt to forget the accident ever happened – including not providing the widows with the compensation they feel they are rightfully due.

Chapecoense appoints a new president and hires a new coach, both of whom believe that the only way to rebuild Chapecoense is to keep moving forward and stop looking back. The entire world now knows the name of this team from the small town of Chapecó, and the team’s new administrators want to take advantage of this increased international profile – including putting the social media hashtag used to send messages of support to Chapecoense on the team’s new jerseys. But when does this seemingly healthy attitude of trying to make the best of a bad situation cross a line and become disrespectful to the club’s culture and the memories of the dead?

The Zimbalist brothers sprinkle Nossa Chape with footage of the team pre-crash – including incredibly haunting footage of the team together on that fateful plane to Medellín moments before takeoff – that makes it clear that more than anything, the men of Chapecoense were a tightly knit family. Their success on the pitch came in large part because of how much they truly cared about each other off of it. Post-crash, the loss of the feeling of brotherhood that previously united the locker room threatens to be too high a price to pay to return to winning ways on the field. It’s a struggle that one cannot even fathom: the need to rebuild as a successful business with the desire to keep the memories of the departed alive. But because of their incredible access to the team’s players, fans, family members, and others, the Zimbalist brothers make the unfathomable feel intimately familiar. Nossa Chape is a beautiful elegy to the departed and an ode to the strength of those who survived.

American Fútbol (Peter Karl & Petar Madjarac)

I am not going to lie to you – when I first read the plot summary of American Fútbol, I very nearly groaned out loud. The feature-length documentary chronicles the adventures of a close-knit quartet of American soccer fanatics who decide to road trip through Latin America and take in as much soccer as possible in the weeks leading up to the 2014 World Cup. I assumed that the film would be an obnoxious cavalcade of popped polo shirt collars and cultural insensitivity, all wrapped up in a beer-soaked American flag.

Well, I am pleased to report that I couldn’t have been more wrong. American Fútbol is a delightfully funny and incredibly eye-opening look at some of the most passionate soccer fans on the planet. Co-director Peter Karl spent a year living abroad in Colombia as a journalist before embarking on this adventure with co-director Petar Madjarac and their friends Austin (usually behind the camera) and Sam (usually generating laughs at his own expense in front of it). Karl’s genuine love and respect for Latin American culture shine through in every frame of American Fútbol, making it far from the ignorant odyssey that I had originally expected. While it doesn’t pack the emotional wallop of Nossa Chape or have that film’s glossy professional sheen, American Fútbol was probably my favorite film of the festival just out of sheer enjoyment.

In Mexico, the guys attend a Club Tijuana game with a diehard American fan and learn about how the club is seeking to unite soccer fans on either side of the border. In Costa Rica, they visit with David Patey, the American businessman who owns the team C.S. Herediano, and take in the raucous atmosphere during a game hosted by the country’s most popular club, Deportivo Saprissa. In Colombia, they get educated on the troubled history of formerly cartel-owned America de Cali and attempt to take the field with a talented blind soccer team in Bogota. In Ecuador, they visit the remote mountainous region that has produced some of the country’s best players and learn how soccer has helped bring the country together across racial divides. In Chile, they learn about how the country’s port cities helped bring soccer to the Americas. In Argentina, they witness how the violence and corruption of ultra fan groups known as barras bravas have marred the beautiful game. In Uruguay, they visit the dilapidated stadium that hosted the first World Cup back in 1930. And in Brazil…well, in Brazil they party with fellow fans from all over the world as they watch the U.S. national team battle their way out of “the group of death.”

It’s an enviable trip, to say the least. It’s also an enlightening one, especially if, like me, your soccer knowledge is embarrassingly Eurocentric. Karl and company interview regular fans, supporters’ group leaders, team owners, legendary players, journalists, and others, providing a wide spectrum of viewpoints that are all treated with respect. American Fútbol gives us a glimpse, albeit brief, into what makes each of these countries’ soccer cultures unique, and makes one long for a future in which the sport means as much to the United States as it does to all of them. And while one does cringe a bit – a lot – at seeing American fans painted with the stars and stripes on their faces screaming “I believe that we will win” when we didn’t even qualify for the upcoming 2018 World Cup in Russia, one cannot be too sad. (Maybe embarrassed, but not sad.) The United States has a long way to go before it can even imagine becoming a soccer powerhouse like any of the countries featured in American Fútbol, but this film helped reignite my hope that we’ll get there someday.

What are your thoughts on any of the films mentioned?