INFINITE FOOTBALL
Corneliu Porumboiu brings his trademark off-kilter humor to this documentary portrait of a small-time bureaucrat on a decades-long quest to revise the rules of the world’s most popular sport.
Known for distinctively deadpan takes on provincial Romanian life like 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST and THE TREASURE, filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu finds a real-life avatar for his obsessive, eccentric characters in this doc about his family friend Laurențiu Ginghină, a small-town civil servant convinced that he holds the keys to improving the sport of soccer. Ever since a severe injury sidelined him from the beautiful game at the age of 19, Ginghină has become certain that injuries like his could have been prevented if only the games’ rules were tweaked. Though he whiles away his days at a boring desk job, he spends his free time theorizing about the benefits of octagonal fields and ways to make the ball “more free.” A bemused Porumboiu follows along as Ginghină earnestly expounds his theories, eventually putting them to the test with a team of unenthusiastic amateur players. While Ginghină’s ideas might be esoteric, one needn’t be a soccer fanatic to find the humor and poignancy at the heart of INFINITE FOOTBALL. In this look at one man’s determination in the face of futility, Porumboiu has crafted an oddly amusing, deeply empathetic portrait of an ordinary man ennobled by extraordinary ambitions.
In Competition: Best Documentary Feature
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