Football Referees get their own Film
According to the newspaper The Guardian (August 13) a new documentary about football referees has been premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. Director is Yves Hinant and the film runs time-wise a bit less than a football match: 77 mins. This is how the intro to the article by Simon Hart runs:
“Nobody knows them, nobody likes them. So it is very interesting to make a movie against the common perception.” Belgian film-maker Yves Hinant is not talking about paedophiles or serial killers, but football referees. The ref may be a popular figure of contempt for frustrated managers, players and fans but Hinant’s film could cause you to think twice before badmouthing the next hapless official. Les Arbitres (The Referees), which had its premiere at the Locarno film festival in Switzerland on Monday, is a revealing fly-on-the-wall documentary about the men in the middle at the Euro 08 finals last year – among them the leading English match official, Howard Webb (photo). Remarkably for the image-obsessed world of modern sport, Hinant gained unfettered access to a handful of these referees, whom we see not just on the pitch but off it, too: in dressing rooms, at debriefs, even at home with their families…”
Can’t wait to watch it!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/13/the-referees-documentary
