Infinite Football

After fracturing his fibula in a 1987 game, former Romanian soccer star and current bureaucrat Laurențiu Ginghină now dreams of radically revising his beloved sport’s rules to reduce injuries and, in turn, revolutionize it. The latest from Romanian New Wave master Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective) is a hilarious and incisive portrait of personal obsession. Po-faced Porumboiu plays the straight man to Ginghină’s desk-jockey dreamer, encountering increasingly outlandish proposals that diminish in plausibility as they increase in emotional and philosophical resonance. In trying to align sport with utopian visions, a man confronts the unyielding parameters of life. A Grasshopper Films release.

“One of the most original and visionary documentary films to have emerged recently.” — Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Screens with The Second Game (11/11 and 11/17):

It’s a deceptively simple set-up: the director and his father watch a 1988 football match that the father refereed, and their live commentary accompanies the original television images in real time. Yet what plays out is far more complex and elusive. As a snowstorm conspires with the grainy VHS image quality to obscure the action, the rapport between father and son also sharpens and fades. Stretches of silence are interlaced with traces of wry humor, bouts of disputed game strategy, and hints at troubling political realities. Porumboiu’s film manages to double as both an elegant formalist experiment and a candid, amusing home movie.