Diego Maradona

A documentary about a footballer's years in Naples. The film starts in 1984: Maradona transfers from Barcelona to Napoli. The city is in one of Italy's poorest regions and the club has won nothing for years. The stadium is full for his presentation. The next seven years are the subject. Napoli win the title twice, the man is received as a god, and a bond forms between him and the city. At the same time his private life comes apart: cocaine, the circle around the mob, a child he will not acknowledge, and mounting pressure. The breaking point is the 1990 World Cup: the semi-final is played in Naples and Argentina knock Italy out. From that day the rest of the country turns against him and the protection disappears. The production was built entirely from archive. The director's team obtained more than five hundred hours of private footage, most of it shot by Maradona's own people and never released. There is no narrator; the voices come from interview recordings. Asif Kapadia directed; he had used the same method in two earlier documentaries. A strong example for anyone who likes sports documentary and narratives built on archive. For a viewer expecting a full career, the film looks only at the Naples years.