Das Spiel (The Game)
2020 · 17m · Switzerland
Directed by Roman Hodel
Genres: documentary, sports
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender, tense
An immersive documentary that follows FIFA referee Fedayi San through a top-tier Swiss football match entirely from his perspective, with the ball never appearing onscreen. The film captures the intense pressure, split-second decisions, and surprising isolation of officiating at the highest level.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Entire football match shown only through the referee — the ball never appears onscreen. That's a real formal idea executed at the highest level of access, and it makes the most-watched sport in the world feel newly strange. In.
Hodel never showing the ball — keeping the camera locked on FIFA referee Fedayi San through ninety minutes of top-tier Swiss football compressed to seventeen — is a Zidane-grade formal commitment. The New Yorker's curation is correct; this is essential sports cinema.
17 minutes of a top-flight football match where the ball never appears on camera — pure formal discipline that converts the most-watched sport into a referee character study. New Yorker placement, 22K views; this is the kind of conceptual constraint I live for.
Reviews
The Game is most impactful in its quieter moments. When the roar of the crowd fades and is replaced by the soft, hurried breathing of San through his microphone, we catch a glimpse of the isolation that comes with his role.
The technical work, such as Lukas Gut's cinematography, Oscar van Hoogevest's sound design and especially the editing by Hodel himself and Rolf Hellat, effectively creates the tension of the football match. It is some Champions League finals level of work.
Festivals
- Venice International Film Festival 2020
- Toronto International Film Festival 2020
- Hamptons International Film Festival 2020, Best Documentary Short
- IDFA - International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2020
- Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur 2020, Best Short Documentary
- ZagrebDox International Documentary Film Festival 2021, Little Stamp Award for Best Film
- Kaohsiung Film Festival 2020, Golden Fireball Award