Soccer moves to the big screen of Far East Film and Far East Film moves to Stadio Friuli: Wednesday April 25th, definitely a day out of the ordinary for the Festival! While a delegation of enthusiasts (among them journalists Mathew Scott from France Press and Richard Havis from South China Morning Post in Hong Kong) will attend the awaited match Udinese-Inter, Teatro Nuovo will show one of the most important titles of the 2012 selection: the adorable soccer fairy-tale A Kick From Heaven by Hanung Bramantyo, an International Premiere.
The movie sails under the Indonesian flag and tells the story of Wahyu, a kid who finds out he’s a naturally gifted soccer player. Behind his father’s back, who is a proud peddler who disapproves of his passion, the boy plays with local teams until a talent scout from a major club invites him to join his squad. His dream seems to finally come true and the relationship with his dad improves. But troubles are just around the corner…
Hanung Bramantyo presents a piece that is totally universal and, at the same time, totally local: in Indonesia, one of the most fertile movie themes is the one with a soccer background! That’s right: in the big South-Eastern Asian archipelago soccer is the most loved sport and it is also an important vehicle for social networking as well as a possible way to redeem oneself from poverty.
In the words of Paolo Bertolin, FEFF’s consultant, «A Kick From Heaven is a film about soccer as a game, as a dream, as life apprenticeship and, that way, there is no doubt that the training sequence will stick in all the viewers’ memory: you don’t want to miss it». A truly memorable sequence where father and son respectively personify the metaphors of Tradition and Future and challenge each other with the unconventional aid of a horse!