As the World Cup 2010 counts down to kick-off in South Africa on June 11, 2010, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) announces the launch of its Soccer Docs program, a series of classic documentaries about football. The movies will be screened for free on IDFA’s online documentary channel IDFA TV.
Over the past few months, IDFA has put together a couple of themed documentary programs that tie in with national and international events. The first of these was China Docs, to coincide with the World Expo, held this year in Shanghai, and IDFA’s tour of China, where selected documentary titles will be screened in Shanghai and Beijing until the end of June.
Soccer Docs Highlight Classic Football Documentaries
On the eve of the World Cup 2010, IDFA TV has now compiled a series of four classic football documentaries for its Soccer Docs theme program.
First in the line-up is the 2001 Danish documentary The Soccer Boy (Fodbolddrengen) by Anders Gustafsson, about 10-year-old Amil who dreams of becoming a professional footballer.
Also from 2001 is Football, Iranian Style (Iran), a portrait of Iranian football fans which, through them, is also a portrait of Iranian society. The documentary was directed by Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and journalist for Newsweek, who was arrested and imprisoned in Tehran for almost four months following last year’s chaotic Iranian elections.
The Argentinean national football team is known for its performance on the pitch. In The Other Cup (La Otra Copa, Argentina, 2006), Damian Cukierkorn follows a group of players that does not receive quite so much media coverage: Argentina’s first homeless football team, as they struggle to be part of the 2004 Homeless World Cup in Sweden.
In Mostar United (Italy/Slovenia, 2008) Claudia Tosi explores the unifying power of the sport, as he films a youth football coach who tries to bring together a city in Bosnia and Herzegovina that post-war is still divided into Croatian and Bosnian sides.
Watch Soccer Documentaries Free Online
IDFA TV was launched in November 2009 during the 22nd IDFA Film Festival in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The service provides free access to several hundred online documentaries that have already been screened on television.
Additional football-related titles will be added to Soccer Docs over the coming weeks. All the films in this program will be available to view online for free for the coming year. So even when the World Cup 2010 comes to an end on July 11, football fans will be able to get their fix of the beautiful game online.
Cecily Layzell - Cecily Layzell is a food and travel writer and founder of restaurant review site www.eat-amsterdam.com.
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