European Films

 

Probably the most famous football player in world history, Argentinean Diego Armando Maradona is known for his excesses both on and off the field. His life is the subject of not one but two upcoming film projects: the Italo-Spanish narrative feature Maradona, la mano de dios or Maradona la mano di Dio (Maradona, the Hand of God) and a documentary simply titled Maradona from Serbian director Emir Kusturica. While the latter may have its premiere at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival, the former, directed by Italian director Marco Risi and starring former arthouse pin-up Marco Leonardi in the title role, will be released in Italy on Friday.

 

Few sports inspire such pan-European and indeed worldwide fever -- both good and bad -- as football, as last year’s World Cup in Germany once again proved. Not surprisingly, many films about football are made every year and, again not surprisingly, many fiction festures combine the sport with war. Recent football-themed successes include the Finnish battle-of-the-sexes comedy FC Venus, German post-WWII melodrama Das Wunder von Bern (The Miracle of Bern), Kusturica’s Balkan war melodrama Zivot je cudo (Life is a Miracle) and Russian WWI and Communist Revolution-drama Garpastum.

 

On the documentary front, former French star player Zidane was the centre of attention in the arty Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle (Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait), his teammate Vikash Dhorasoo was the subject of the intimate super 8 documentary Substitute and Germany’s highest-grossing documentary of last year was Deutschland. Ein Sommermärchen about the country’s participation in the World Cup it hosted. No less than four million football fans lined up for a cinema ticket even though the outcome was no spoiler.

 

Whether Maradona, la mano de dios (the title is a reference to the famous 1986 World Cup goal that was taken by his head and the "Hand of God", as he described it himself) will similarly inspire Italian tifosi to line up for tickets remains to be seen, but the Argentinean player remains hugely popular in the country where he came out for SSC Napoli. He played for the Naples-based team from 1984 through 1992, when he quit the club amid a cocaine scandal, only one of the many headline-making incidents involving the football superstar. Since his retirement, his cocaine adiction has been a continuous problem and Maradona suffered from a serious heart attack after a cocaine overdose in 2004. He has also battled obesity and claims of having fostered illegitimate children.

 

Maradona, la mano de dios was filmed on location in Argentina and Italy and stars three actors as Maradona: Gonzalo Alarcon plays Diego as a child; Abel Ayala plays him as an adolescent and Marco Leonardi as an adult. If this film will catch fire in arthouse theatres around the world, Leonardi will be looking at an arthouse come-back after his starring roles in two of the defining niche successes of the late eighties and early ninetees: Nuovo cinema paradiso from 1988 and Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) from 1992. The actor could recently be seen in two films from American directors: Abel Ferrara’s religious drama Mary and Roberto Rodriguez’ Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Maradona’s wife and self-proclaimed love of his life Claudia Villafañe -- whom he divorced in 2004 -- will be played by Argentinean actresses Eliana González (as the adolescent Claudia) and Julieta Díaz.

 

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