Messi

A documentary about the life of a footballer. The method is unusual. There are no conventional interviews; instead a large table is laid in a restaurant and the people who know Messi are seated around it. They eat, they drink and they talk about him. Those at the table are a wide circle: childhood friends from Rosario, his first coaches, his teachers, teammates from Barcelona, journalists and older figures of Argentine football. Johan Cruyff is at the table too. Reconstructions run between the conversations. The childhood years were staged with actors: the growth hormone treatment, the injections, the family's argument about how to pay for it and the decision to move to Spain. Those passages are what the film is most discussed for. Rather than telling the story, the narrative shows how the story gets told among people; those at the table contradict each other now and then. Álex de la Iglesia directed; known for his fiction films, this is his first documentary. It was shown in Venice. An interesting production for anyone who likes football documentary and unusual form. For a viewer expecting a summary of a career, the film gives little room to matches and puts its weight on the childhood years.