Craig Tanner: FIFA’s White Elephants

… it also has the title ”The March of the White Elephants” written on the screen… is a well made tv-journalistic documentary about the incredible money sucking world football organisation FIFA that hopefully now will be re-born with a new structure and other leaders than Sepp Blatter and his gang.

The film, however, just completed, and sent to us by New York company Cargo Film & Releasing, does not have its focus on the corruption scandals of today, they are mentioned at the end as texts on the screen (the photo is from the arrest of one of the FIFA executives) – the film is a fine documentation of the way Brazil and its politicians played the game of FIFA, building new stadiums for public money that could have/ should have been spent to improve the living conditions of the poor people in the country. The stadiums were (many of them at least) built in areas of the huge country where the football culture is not that developed, stadiums that now stand empty and/or are being used for other non-football purposes.

The film is set up in the classical tv-journalistic way: Dilma Rousseff welcomes the world to Brazil and the best ever World Cup to be performed – cut to a favela next to a stadium in Sao

Paolo, where people talk about the theme of the official Brazil spending money on stadiums that could have been used to better life conditions for the favela population… Journalist Patrick Granja is the storyteller, the one  who has filmed the many and strong demonstrations that happened in 2013 in the streets of Rio and Sao Paolo. For football addicts like this reviewer chapeau for Romario, who analyses the corruption of FIFA and the government precisely, whereas Ronaldo stands out as ”a traitor” according to the demonstrators after he had formulated that you can not compare expenses for the stadiums to what could have gone to hospitals etc.

The synopsis provided by Cargo: The film reveals the real legacy of the FIFA World Cup – state of the art stadiums that were built to stage a four-week tournament will stand idle, soaking up funds needed for basic services and for health, housing and education. The filmmakers visit the sites of the last two World Cups, Brazil & South Africa, to get testimony from social activists who make it clear that FIFA is a modern day parasite abusing countries for the love of Football.

For me no doubt that this will be a film that could come to a tv channel near you!

USA, 2015, 52 mins.

Contact to Cargo Film & Releasing:

elliana@cargofilm-releasing.com