FILMS WITH BALLS
Screen International, which has been doing a stand-up job with their daily publications (nb: I write for Screen), noted one of the more interesting trends here at the Berlin Film Festival — soccer films, or football if you must. Silke Schütze in ‘They Shoot, They Score’ noted a number of the films from Jafr Panahi Iranian competition Offside, to the rousing doc Once in a Lifetime by John Dower and Paul Crowder, to the Gerardo Oivares’ The Great Match about the international fascination with the world match. One of the less obvious football films is Robert I. Douglas’ Eleven Men Out, a comedy about a gay soccer team in Iceland that shows in Panorama. At his screening, the director offered to stay after to answer questions about “gay football in Iceland” for any one interested. But, knowing his audience, he admitted that the film “doesn’t have many scenes of football playing. But there are lots of shower scenes.” And indeed there were.
