A documentary shows the struggle of Juan Carlos Unzué against ALS. In the documentary, a team from the TVC Sports department formed by Xavi Torres, Santi Padró and Jesús Muñoz makes a day-to-day monitoring of Unzué since June 18, 2020, when the former coach of Girona announced that he was suffering from ALS. They also appear other cases of ALS patients. Unzué explains that the documentary conveys that “despite the limitations generated by ALS” to those who suffer from the disease, “life is worth living and enjoying”. The documentary premieres this Monday at the Málaga Festival in the Special Passes.
Since he was diagnosed with ALS, Unzué has focused his life on two major goals: to give maximum visibility to this minority disease and, above all, to raise as much money as possible to devote to research ‘an almost invisible disease that has a life expectancy of between four and six years.
The documentary follows all the meetings and conversations with leaders of Barça and Manchester City to organize a football match that was played at the Camp Nou on August 24, 2022 and that achieved a revenue of 4.3 millions of euros intended for ALS research. At the same time, Unzué opens the doors of his house and shows the evolution of his physical degeneration and other people who suffer from the disease also appear.
‘Living with ALS’
In a round table as part of the Malaga Festival with the title, ‘Living with ALS’, Unzué explained that ALS is a very complicated disease, but the biggest problem in the country “is not the disease itself, but the situation regarding aid which unfortunately does not exist. This makes the disease more complicated to bear”, he adds.
Unzué states that “there are a thousand reasons to let go of a disease like this, but as a society we cannot allow the final decision to be because you feel that you are an economic burden that cannot be assumed”. He regrets that he joins the consequences of the disease which are very large and complicated and stress, “the feeling that you are left, that you are left in this world”.
The co-director of Unzué. Juancar’s last team, Xavi Torres, explained that he met Unzué as a sports journalist. He believes that it was easy to go ahead with the proposal because they “are neither actors nor actresses and the documentary is about life. What we had to do was show what was happening at each moment, with them and in the other cases of ALS”, he adds. In fact, Unzué declares that in the documentary they show “the raw reality”.
“Life is worth living and enjoying”
Unzué explains that he tells people that he will go to watch the documentary that is not a drama, despite the emotional and hard moments, as it also has many moments of smiles and joy. The documentary conveys that “despite the limitations that ALS generates for those of us who are sick, life is worth living and enjoying”. He declares that this sentence is not his, but other colleagues who are in a more advanced stage of the disease than his.
‘Unzué Juancar’s last team is a production of Televisió de Catalunya and A Contracorriente Films. It will hit theaters on May 5.
