Thinking Football gems (I): “Football Rebels”

“Football Rebels” (2012), directed by Giles Rof and Gilles Pérez and presented by ex-footballer Eric Cantona, inaugurates the new section that will be published these days dedicated to the film gems shown throughout the seven editions of the Thinking Football Film Festival. The series received a Premio del Público (Audience Award) in 2003, the first year the festival was celebrated, in which a total of twelve films form countries such as Germany, Sweden, Argentina, Uruguay, the US, or Ukraine were screened.

The series, produced by the prestigious French TV channel ARTE, is a five-episode documentary that reviews the lives of five ex-footballers who were noted for their involvement in political and social action in their respective countries: Didier Drogba, Carlos Caszely, Rachid Mekhloufi, Predrag Pasic and the legendary Sócrates. The first series was followed by a second, “Football Rebels 2” (2014), which was screened in the second Thinking Football festivalin 2015*. We have selected two episodes, one from each series, available on YouTube, to open this film section that will continue for the next few days.

The first episode is dedicated to Carlos Caszely’s story and his fight against the military dictatorship of Chile. Caszely, who played for Levante UD and RCD Español, is regarded as one of the best Chilean footballers in history and one of the most eminent Colo-Colo’s players of all time, a club he belonged to for 15 seasons. This is his “Football Rebels” episode: watch it here.

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The second episode is dedicated to Alfonsinho (Alfonso Celso Garcia Reis), who visited us in the 2016 edition. Alfonsinho, a psychiatrist by profession, became a national icon in his fight against the Brazilian military dictatorship. Gilberto Gil’s celebrated song “Meio de campo” and the film “Passe Livre” directed by Oswaldo Caldeira reflect some of these aspects about him. He was also the first player to fight for footballers’ social rights, demanding the permission to change teams in case they were not given a valid contract. His episode, which belongs to “Football Rebels 2”, can be found here.

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* In ‘Football Rebels 2’, the ex-footballers chosen to tell their stories outside of football were Honey Thaljieh (founder of the Palestinian women’s national team), Claudio Tamburrini (the Lanus’ goalkeeper that was imprisoned and tortured during Videla’s Argentinian dictatorship and escaped from the infamous torture centre Mansión Sere), Cristiano Lucarelli (symbol of left-wing politics in the Italian football for the last few years), Alfonsinho (one of the pioneers in the fight for footballers’ employment rights) and Saturnino Navazo (republican prisoner at Mauthausen, the Nazi concentration camp, where he organised a prison football tournament for the inmates).