The best new sports doc­u­men­taries to look out for in 2018

Speak­ing at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in 1965, Kon Ishikawa explained that with Tokyo Olympiad, his spec­tac­u­lar por­trait of the 1964 Sum­mer Olympics, his aim was ​“to grasp the solem­ni­ty of the moment when man defies his lim­its, and to express the soli­tude of the ath­lete who, in order to win, strug­gles against himself.”

Sev­er­al films at this year’s Sheffield Doc/​Fest matched Ishikawa’s descrip­tion of the con­cerns of his own work. Per­son­al and pro­found, these films show sports­men and women fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant bat­tles; the ath­letes strug­gles made to feel uni­ver­sal. The most unusu­al was Roman­ian direc­tor Cor­neliu Porumboiu’s Infi­nite Foot­ball, which paints sport as an escapist prac­tice, explor­ing the obses­sion inher­ent to spec­ta­tor­ship and the plea­sures of dis­trac­tion that deep involve­ment in it offers.

The film fol­lows Porumboiu’s friend Lau­ren­ti Ginghi­na, an absent-mind­ed bureau­crat try­ing to gen­er­ate inter­est in a new sport of his own inven­tion – an increas­ing­ly con­vo­lut­ed, large­ly non­sen­si­cal vari­a­tion of reg­u­lar asso­ci­a­tion foot­ball that sup­pos­ed­ly increas­es ​“the ball’s speed by decreas­ing the play­ers’ speed.” Oth­er than a cap­ti­vat­ing cen­tral scene in which semi-pro foot­ballers play-test the lat­est ver­sion of Laurenti’s game, with frus­trat­ing results, the film con­sists of lit­tle oth­er than the director’s lengthy, often humor­ous­ly digres­sive con­ver­sa­tions with his subject.

Lau­ren­ti rev­els in the oppor­tu­ni­ty to deep-dive into his fan­ta­sy and how it relates to the con­tours of his life to date. It is an odd­ly riv­et­ing insight into one man’s imag­i­na­tion, into the idea of sport as leisure­ly relief from the pres­sures of labour and, more sub­tly, into the country’s polit­i­cal cli­mate at large – all through the lens of one frus­trat­ed for­mer sports­man try­ing to change the world by increas­ing the ball speed.

In Mar­ta Prus’ Over the Lim­it, sport is a source of suf­fer­ing. Set dur­ing the run-up to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil, the film details the pun­ish­ment of a young Russ­ian gym­nast (Mar­gari­ta Mamun) by her exact­ing, abu­sive coach (Iri­na Vin­er-Usman­o­va) with clin­i­cal pre­ci­sion. A lean, effi­cient­ly edit­ed obser­va­tion­al film, it ham­mers home its cen­tral point quite relent­less­ly. Excel­lence demands total invest­ment from the ath­lete, and will cause no small amount of pain.

Prus’ inter­est is in process, her gaze switch­ing between attrac­tion towards the artistry of the gymnast’s prac­tice, and repul­sion at the psy­cho­log­i­cal treat­ment it took to achieve it. In lieu of any nar­ra­tion or inter­views, any bio­graph­i­cal detail that can be gleaned from Mamum comes from watch­ing her train, or by see­ing her relax, by read­ing her face or by guess­ing her mood.

Depict­ing the gymnast’s rou­tines at length, Prus focus­es on the beau­ty of the per­for­mance, using accen­tu­at­ed sound design and shal­low-focus cin­e­matog­ra­phy to high­light the exact­ness of the move­ments and motions, and the bal­leti­cism of their com­bi­na­tion as rou­tine – but always return­ing to the source. ​“You’re not a human being, you’re an ath­lete,” Mamun’s coach snaps after a par­tic­u­lar­ly bru­tal train­ing session.

This sen­ti­ment is shared by the pro­tag­o­nist of Fin­lay Pretsell’s impres­sion­is­tic, sen­so­r­i­al Time Tri­al, a film focused around the floun­der­ing final fur­longs of the career of esteemed British cyclist David Mil­lar, a man who, despite sev­er­al set­backs and his flag­ging fit­ness, can’t quite leave his obses­sion behind. ​“We train to suf­fer” he says. ​“Fuck­ing stu­pid sport.” To demon­strate why, Pret­sell, a com­pet­i­tive cyclist him­self, focus­es his approach around depict­ing the sen­sa­tion of rid­ing at this lev­el through high-speed immer­sion with­in it, using the film’s form to repli­cate the pun­ish­ing phys­i­cal­i­ty of top lev­el cycling, as well as its rep­e­ti­tious­ness and rhythm.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Mar­tin Radish cap­tures Mil­lar last rides in a super-widescreen, whoosh­ing along beside him, or shoot­ing from the dash­board of sup­port­ing cars, from the rider’s hel­met, and most inti­mate­ly, from the han­dle­bars look­ing up; whilst a cacoph­o­ny of sound (exhaled breaths, rush­es of wind, the con­tin­u­al pump­ing of legs and spin­ning of wheels) com­pli­ment Dan Deacon’s clam­orous elec­tron­ic score. It’s strange­ly hyp­not­ic, an effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a pecu­liar prac­tice and a bit­ter insight into the trou­bled mind of a man tor­ment­ed by the idea of los­ing the only thing he knows.

In the same inter­view, Nishikawa end­ed by say­ing that when watch­ing his film he, ​“Want­ed peo­ple to redis­cov­er with aston­ish­ment that won­der which is being human.” This is the case for these films too. As with the best films about sport, inter­est in the game at hand is far from a require­ment. The only invest­ment need­ed is in the peo­ple at the cen­tre. Every ath­lete is human; often painful­ly so.