Just as 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar is set to take off, a film about youth football and the multicultural history of the ’roundball game’ in Australia is screening from this weekend, across cinemas in Sydney and Melbourne.
O-LYM-PIC Football Dreams, which is nominated f the best Football film internationally at the Paladino d’Oro Sport Film Festival, is a documentary about big dreams, ambition, and integrity.
Award-winning Australian documentary filmmaker, Dr Janet Merewether, took her camera and followed her 10-year-old son, his teammates at the Sydney Olympic FC Junior Team, their enthusiastic parents, and over the course of three years, documented them touring Europe to compete against junior football teams from the powerhouses of the Bundesliga and top European clubs such as Manchester United, Ajax and Benfica. The documentary also features interviews with some of Australia, Germany and the UK’s leading coaches and technical directors, and covers quite a lot about the history of the game in Australia, including some of the Melbourne clubs, Adelaide clubs, the NPL and, and the establishment of those clubs.
“When I found out that the team was going, I decided to follow and film it, and bring this knowledge from Europe back here,” Merewether told Neos Kosmos on Friday as she prepares to travel to Palermo to attend the film’s international premiere at the Paladino d’Oro Sport Film Festival.
“I shot the film over three years. Luckily, I’d finished all the filming before the pandemic struck.”
However as she started editing the film during lockdown the scandal with Bill Pappas erupted in the media.
“Bill Pappas is in the film because he was then president of the club, and he’s a parent on the tour as well. So I changed the film to incorporate that. And then of course, the Socceroos were trying to qualify for this year’s World Cup. And I thought I’ll wait to see if they win or lose. So they won, which is now incorporated into the film as well.”
Apart from filmmaking, Merewether is also a teacher and university lecturer interested in the personal growth “and the role of sport in fostering beautiful relationships between men and boys and learning experiences of how you deal with losses, how you pick yourself up. They are big life experiences.”
Here in Australia, she added, soccer is becoming a sport that only the rich can play, if you want to be serious about it.
“There is a very big economic barrier. It gets very expensive, particularly if kids, if teenagers want to pursue the game. Whereas in Europe, if you’re talented, it’s free. They just get the best kids and it doesn’t matter about the parents’ background.”
The main reason why football is expensive here, she continued, is because in Europe, the junior clubs are connected to the larger clubs. “But even the smaller clubs, in Germany for example, because the game is so popular, they can gain a lot of money through selling the broadcast rights for the games. And that money goes into youth development and clubs whereas here they have to beg broadcasters to screen the A-league.”
Soccer is a game that unites people. Merewether depicts how in Europe, soccer is also seen as a way of uniting kids across many cultures.
“In some of these tournaments in Poland, in Germany, that the Olympic boys participated in, it was also about getting kids of different cultures and nationalities to play together, and learn how to coexist in a healthy kind of way. I also talk about the women’s game and the future professional pathways for girls. Because you see some of the girls in under 11 age group playing alongside the boys, you know, and so I do discuss that as well. The Women’s World Cup is in Australia next year, so that’s quite a big issue.”
- O-LYM-PIC Football Dreams is screening in Melbourne at the Classic cinemas, Elsternwick, on Sunday 6/11 at 9.55am and Monday 7/11 at 4pm.
For group bookings call (03) 9524 7900. - In Sydney, at the Randwick Ritz cinema on Friday 4/11 at 4.30, Saturday 5/11 at 10am, Sunday 6/11 at 10am, Tuesday 8/11 at 4.15. For group bookings call 02 8324 2500
- And in Parramata at the Riverside Theatre on Saturday 19/11 at 4.30pm and Sunday 20/11 at 2.30pm.
Watch the trailer below: