Mario

Mario plays for the youth team of a Swiss football club and is waiting for a professional contract. The club signs another player in the same position: Leon comes from Germany and the two will compete for one place. The club puts them in the same flat. They train together, live together, and a relationship begins. Then talk spreads through the team. The agents step in and both are asked to put the situation right. Marcel Gisler directs. Max Hubacher plays Mario and Aaron Altaras plays Leon. The subject is visibility in football. The film builds it not as a personal matter but as one of an industry: the club, the sponsors, the supporters and the agent all press in the same direction and nobody says anything outright. The training and match scenes are realistic; the actors were prepared for football and the pitch sections are technically convincing. Its best quality is the form of the pressure; nobody threatens, everyone appears well meaning, and it arrives dressed as advice. The narrative offers no easy resolution and the ending is outside genre convention. It took several awards in Switzerland and caused argument with its subject. Who it is for: viewers who like European independent drama and narratives grounded in sport. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the football sections are long for a viewer uninterested in it, and the ending gives no hope.