Stream It Or Skip It: ‘This is Football’ on Amazon Prime, a Soccer Documentary Series Aiming to Transcend Sports-doc Cliches

A note for North American readers: Amazon Prime’s This is Football is about soccer. Round ball, not oblong ball. The six-part series aims to tell stories outside the typical realm of sports documentaries, avoiding the corporate sponsorships and soap opera-esque drama of huge-money capitalist endeavors to focus on bigger ideas. Episode titles include “Belief,” “Chance” and “Wonder; the debut, Redemption,” explores how the game helped heal the shattered nation of Rwanda.

THIS IS FOOTBALL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A drone soars over an African forest, into the haze above the Rwandan capital of Kigali.

The Gist: More than 10,000 kilometers from England, a group of red-shirted Rwandans gathers by a large screen to watch Liverpool play Manchester United. They’re Liverpool superfans, swaying arm-in-arm singing team theme song You’ll Never Walk Alone; one has been following the club for decades, and another named his son after the team’s all-time great goalscorer, Ian Rush. Such is the great international reach of the English Premier League.

But don’t cynically write this off as a global marketing triumph. Liverpool fan club members call themselves a family for good reason. Claude-Romeo Bisangwa was orphaned in 1994, during the horrific Rwandan ethnic genocide, when a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu people were murdered by Hutu extremists. Joe Rutayisire’s father was killed and thrown in the river. Alexis Mutangana, chairman of the fan club, fought for the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which ended the genocide. They lost friends and family in horrific, tragic ways, and their affection for Liverpool, and football in general, has helped them form a new family.

Director James Erskine contextualizes the stories of these men by detailing the history of Rwandan football fandom. After World War I, Belgium was granted governorship of the nation, importing the popular European sport to Africa; the Eurocentric leadership also initiated segregation of the Tutsis and Hutus. Inevitably, Rwandan leagues formed, stadiums were built and football became a national pastime. Erskine briefly profiles some Rwandan players who were national stars in the 1980s and ’90s — one of whom tells the story of how his life was spared when his probable murderer recognized him.

Erskine interviews Rwandan president Paul Kagame, who says the encouragement of Rwandans to play football was a calculated political reunification strategy. Felicite Rwemarika, currently vice president of the Rwanda Olympic Committee, formed women’s football leagues to help them cope with the brutality they endured during the genocide. In the episode’s final moments, we see Claude-Romeo, Joe and Alexis in England, visiting Anfield, Liverpool’s football stadium, to see their favorite team play — and for them, it’s a near-religious experience.

Our Take: The series’ title sequence is an uberdramatic assemblage of slo-mo images and grandiose voiceover making claims about the power of football that stop just shy of saying it’ll cure cancer and reverse global warming. It’s enough to raise a skeptic’s eyebrow an inch. But brows will unfurrow quickly — Redemption tells an unlikely story of healing in the wake of awful tragedy.

Although he ably contextualizes the value of the game within the country’s political situations, Erskine avoids making sweeping claims about a Rwandan happily-ever-after. In the wake of the genocide, thousands of Hutus, suspected murderers, were released from massively overcrowded prisons, and took to the football pitch to play alongside Tutsis peacefully. The film presents this unlikely scenario matter-of-factly; such an example of the human capacity for forgiveness is powerful enough without dramatic embellishment.

Some of Redemption‘s best moments are earnestly sentimental: Joe giving his young son the jersey of his father’s favorite player, Kenny Dalglish, and later, standing teary-eyed at the base of a Dalglish statue at Anfield. Or Claude-Romeo saying he plays football for the sake of unity and love in the wake of tragedy; he says his marriage and impending fatherhood is his dream come true. We’re sincerely moved by these moments, and never crassly manipulated.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Overcome with emotion, Alexis quietly cries into his scarf as he sits in the stands at Anfield, watching his beloved team.

Sleeper Star: This is obvious — the next generation of Liverpool superfans: Joe’s little boy in the Dalglish jersey, and Claude-Romeo’s unborn child, who he says with a twinkle in his eye, if it’s a boy, he’ll surely play for Liverpool.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Their policy was to divide and rule,” Alexis says of Rwanda’s Belgian leadership, “but at least they gave us football.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Redemption is genuinely heartbreaking and heartwarming. If the other episodes of This is Football are this good, fans of documentaries — and not just sports documentaries — are in for a treat.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream This Is Football on Amazon Prime