Five Films About Football

You don’t have to love football to love these films, but you do have to love circles and squares. —Alexandre Koberidze

1. The First Swallow (dir. Nana Mchedlidze, 1975)

This film tells the story of the first Georgian footballers. It is a splendid experience to watch people as they are overcome by a completely new, unfamiliar, incomprehensible and unbridled emotion. Most of the team members are no longer young, but it’s clear that they’re experiencing the same thing that we feel in our early youth when we love for the very first time. These men, though older, are the first to fall in love with football in Georgia, and the first to form a football club. Only the team’s goalkeeper is young, and he falls in love both with football and with the daughter of the city’s head doctor. This is how a person of the 20th century is born, someone who can love both a person and a ball at the same time; it is no coincidence that the scene in which he wakes up in the doctor’s practice resembles the birth of a child. It is said that many male directors were offered the chance to make this film, but none of them dared take on the task. The fear that they would not succeed in making a film about football was too strong. One must not forget that this is a time when Georgian football is blooming, footballers are regarded as national heroes, and a failure to make a football film would have been a disaster for the filmmaker.In the end, it was given to Nana Mchedlidze, saying that if the film doesn’t come out well, they could say, “Well, how could a woman make a film about football?” Mchedlidze made the most beautiful film about football. The script was written by my grandfather, and if I ever gather enough courage, I will make my own First Swallow.

2. Feola (dir. Baadur Tsuladze, 1970)

In my opinion, Feola belongs to that small and mysterious group known as the “Flawless Film Club.” Idea, script, directing, acting ensemble and performance, music, cinematography, art direction, costumes, music, everything in this film is extraordinary. I want to make a film like that as well.

3. Forza Bastia (dir. Jacques Tati and Sophie Tatischeff, 1978/2000)

Forza Bastia is Jacques Tati’s last film, which, as it is said, he was unable to complete for health reasons (are these problems not directly linked to the difficulties caused him by various individuals or companies during the making of his earlier films?). Fortunately, the film, which was shot in Corsica in 1978, was completed by his daughter Sophie Tatischeff, and finally shown in 2000. It is proof that when a sincere person picks up a camera with the intention of creating something beautiful, fate will be their best friend. In the case of this film, it was precisely that phenomenon we sometimes call fate, luck, or providence which ensured that it was not Tati who had to adapt to the rest of the world, but that the world itself had to adapt to him. This time, Tati did not create the world he wished to film (something he so often tried to do, and which largely cost him his health), but rather picked up the camera, and the world itself became what only a Tati film can be. When someone picks up a tool (in this case a camera) and the weather changes in whatever way the person holding the wand wishes (clouds gathering over a sunny city, rain starting to fall), isn’t that what we call magic?

4. Light of my eye, wherefore art thou sad? (dir. Alexandre Koberidze, year ????)

This is a film that doesn’t exist yet, or better said, it exists in my heart and in my mind, but it does not exist on film yet. It’s my dream to walk through the tunnel that the footballers use to enter the pitch at the fully packed Boris Paichadze Stadium in Tbilisi—this film will be my attempt to make that dream come true.

5. Football Itself

Most people watch professional football on their screens, and those who follow it closely are watching one, big, never-ending movie. Of course, we love the purely football-related aspects, but this is all inextricably linked to the overly complex dramatic labyrinths that have to do with the lives of players, teams, managers—with their personal stories, politics, victories and defeats, with the rise of the fallen and the sudden fall of the most steadfast: here, romanticism clashes with pragmatism; decency and righteousness clash with fear and filth and cowardice and shame; and, sometimes, even heaven clashes with earth (try to remember which direction Leo Messi points his hands when he scores a goal, and which direction Cristiano Ronaldo points his hands when he scores his goal). Some here only think of themselves, whilst for others—as Eric Cantona says in Ken Loach’s film Looking for Eric (2009)—a well-timed, gentle, and skillful pass is what matters most. We witness, live, how the impossible becomes possible—is there a better lesson than this? The ball is round; anything is possible. Let this film never end.