Blind Ambi­tion – first-look review

War­wick Ross and Robert Coe’s Blind Ambi­tion fol­lows four refugees on their lead up to becom­ing the first ever Zim­bab­wean team to com­pete in the World Wine Tast­ing Cham­pi­onship. Joseph, Mar­lvin, Par­don and Tinashe all fled from Zim­bab­we to South Africa around a decade before their team was formed to escape the tur­moil in their home country.

Ini­tial­ly enter­ing the hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try to sup­port their fam­i­lies, each mem­ber of the even­tu­al team grad­u­al­ly pro­gressed from wait­ers to som­me­liers due to their acquired taste to wine, con­se­quen­tial­ly aban­don­ing the paths they had set out for their new lives in order to ful­ly com­mit them­selves to their craft. Sur­pris­ing­ly none of the four had met each oth­er before mov­ing to South Africa; it was a shared pas­sion of wine mixed with a stroke of fate that brought the team togeth­er at a com­pe­ti­tion to find the next South African wine-tast­ing team.

Through a series of inter­views with the team and their fam­i­lies through­out the film we realise the extent to which these men have defied all odds. Tak­ing life-threat­en­ing pas­sages to cross into South Africa, arriv­ing with no mon­ey and fac­ing the hard­ships of liv­ing in some of the country’s more dan­ger­ous set­tle­ments, the group must also con­tend with the strug­gle of enter­ing as a refugee into a coun­try still, to a great extent, bound to the racist ide­ol­o­gy of its past. Before Ross and Coe even begin to delve into the race to the cham­pi­onships in France, the sto­ries of these men’s jour­ney from refugees to some of the best som­me­liers in the coun­try is a film-wor­thy under­dog sto­ry in itself.

Ross and Coe’s style of film­mak­ing is sim­plis­tic, yet this is com­pli­ment­ed by the unique and pow­er­ful sto­ry and the charis­mat­ic sub­jects of the doc­u­men­tary them­selves. The Zim­bab­wean team are fun, pas­sion­ate and make for an enjoy­able watch as they come togeth­er, jok­ing amongst them­selves and with the doc­u­men­tary team.

Whether it be in teas­ing Par­don for his height dur­ing a friend­ly foot­ball game or danc­ing togeth­er whilst singing songs in Shona, they find ways to cre­ate moments of hap­pi­ness and humour even through the obsta­cles they face, which unfor­tu­nate­ly are still preva­lent in their lives despite all they have over­come. This on-screen enter­tain­ment is not lim­it­ed to the team; their coach­es JV Ridon and Denis Gar­ret (Gar­ret espe­cial­ly) have viva­cious per­son­al­i­ties that intro­duce view­ers to the elab­o­rate dra­mas of the wine world.

What stands out most about the film is the Zim­bab­wean patri­o­tism that res­onates through the team. Whilst all four men were eager to flee their home­land it is clear that they are proud of their Zim­bab­wean nation­al­i­ty. Wine-tast­ing is def­i­nite­ly a niche inter­est, espe­cial­ly at a com­pet­i­tive stage, so it is pow­er­ful watch­ing not only the pride of the team at the idea of bring­ing to light the tal­ent of the Zim­bab­wean peo­ple on a glob­al lev­el, but also the sup­port and pride of Zim­bab­we as they wit­nessed the recog­ni­tion of the team. It’s heart­en­ing to see Zim­bab­we be defined not sole­ly by the polit­i­cal or eco­nom­ic issues of their coun­try, but by the great extent of their indi­vid­ual talents.

While there is a focus on the road to the cham­pi­onship and the out­come of the com­pe­ti­tion, the real joy of Blind Ambi­tion is watch­ing the strength and ambi­tion in the team. How they not only changed the lives of them­selves and their fam­i­lies, but also exposed the world to the untapped tal­ent present in Zimbabwe.

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