a young “Ukrainian Maradona” in search of a goal

NETFLIX – ON DEMAND – DOCUMENTARY

“You have to be ready to die on the pitch. » Alla, the coach of the only professional women’s football team in a poor suburb of Kyiv, Ukraine, speaks to 20-year-old Alina Shilova. Nicknamed the “Ukrainian Maradona”, the young blonde woman is one of the most talented of the group. She dreams of being selected for the national team, of a career, of glory, and of a cure for poverty. One of those lives turned upside down, for sure, by the Russian attacks on Ukrainian territory, since Thursday, February 24.

Home Games, directed by Alisa Kovalenko, has been streaming on Netflix since December 23, 2021. It is the first Ukrainian documentary on the platform, after the series servant of the people – whose main actor is Volodymyr Zelensky, who became president in May 2019, now a warlord –, which was taken off the air by Russian private television TNT after three episodes in December 2019…

Ode to Courage

The film moves from the football pitches to Alina Shilova’s cramped apartment where, under harsh light, the young player constantly proves her courage. After growing up in the streets of Kiev, she takes refuge on the football fields when her parents go back and forth in prison. The sudden death of her mother, aged 39, forced Alina Shilova to care for Renat and Regina, her half-brother and half-sister, 6 and 7 (whose father recently died of AIDS).

In the evening, she tells them an alternate version of the Cinderella story. In the suburbs of Kiev, the princess does not put on fancy shoes, but new crampons. After the carriage has turned into a pumpkin, Alina still has to tidy up, clean the bathtub, hold the accommodation. Ode to the courage of these women against whom fate seems to be relentless, Home Games sinks the heart: the obstacles seem to arise with infinity in front of this Ukrainian family. To the point of endangering the football hopes of Aline Shilova.

She who, at the start of the film, tenderly cuts out photos of the legend Zidane to make her ” dream Team “, said he feared for his future: “Do I still have a chance to play for the national team? », she asks her coach, in training. As if to answer it, she scores a goal, before being celebrated by her teammates.

Selected at the Fipadoc Biarritz festival in 2019, co-produced by filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych (director of Reflectionwhich was in competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2021), this powerful documentary offers a fresh and tender look at Ukraine in recent years.

Alisa Kovalenko is currently working on a teenage adventure film shot near Luhansk, on the edge of the coal mines, on the front line of this pro-Russian separatist republic whose recognition by Vladimir Putin preceded the war… She was there when the conflict broke out and is, for the moment, blocked in the Donbass.

In Home Games, facing the camera, the young Alina Shilova expresses a wish which, since this disastrous February 24, takes on a new meaning: “I want to live like normal people. »