The judges at the Cannes film festival have often faced difficult decisions when it is time to decide upon the winner of the Palme d’Or. They will perhaps be grateful this year that a drama about the formation of Fifa – bankrolled by the world football body – has made it all the easier for them to wipe one entry from the list of possible winners.
Starring Tim Roth – the actor famous for playing the duplicitous Mr Orange in Reservoir Dogs – as Fifa’s current president Sepp Blatter, Gérard Depardieu as the World Cup creator Jules Rimet, and the New Zealand actor Sam Neill as Blatter’s predecessor João Havelange, it bills itself as the story of “a group of passionate European mavericks” who “join forces on an ambitious project: the Fédération Internationale de Football Association”. The trailer, however, largely depicts men in a boardroom discussing football administration.
The film cost a reported £19m to make, with Fifa said to have pumped £16m into the project, and flatteringly portrays Blatter, Rimet and Havelange as visionaries and icons of the global game. Blatter himself was reported to have tweaked the script.
