They are the details that transform the history of the world into that of a person and cinema and sport are able to enhance them. If they get together there is the possibility of understanding a decades-long conflict in less than two hours and almost resolving it, at least in a space of two meters by one. These are the measurements of the Tatami, a surface used for judo competitions and the title of a film coming out in Italy on 4 April, in the first country to distribute it after the passage to the last Venice Film Festival.
It was signed by two directors Guy Nattiv, famous for the Oscar for the short film Skinand Zar Amir, best actress at Cannes for Holy Spider by Ali Abbasi. The plot revolves around an Iranian judoka and her coach, who arrive at the World Championships to take home a gold and are stopped by their own government which fears a mix-up with their Israeli opponent. It is inspired by a real, male story, that of Saeid Mollaei who really disobeyed Tehran during a Judo World Cup, but the protagonist carries more traces of her. She is Sadaf Khadem, the first Iranian boxer who risked arrest for not wearing the hijab, she is Kimia Alizade, taekwondo champion, bronze at the 2016 Games, who returned from heroin and then fled to Germany in search of freedom. In the character emerge the traits of athletes who felt the pride of representing Iran and discovered that they could not do so. The regimes look for faces to wave, to stick to the dictatorship and sport rebels, by nature. Cinema amplifies the message, like this Tatami becomes a foam raft amidst international tensions.
Nattiv and Amir are both expatriates, like the entire cast and they have all worked in secret in Tbilisi, Georgia, because this scandalous production annoys more than one state, agitates powerful people who would try to interrupt the filming: «The climate on the set was he took that into account, it took us five minutes to become friends. We eat the same food, listen to the same music. We are not the worst enemies that school teaches us to hate.”
The film comes out four months before the Olympics and poses a dilemma that will also affect the competitions in Paris. The Ukrainians refuse to compete with the Russians who the Olympic Committee has disqualified and readmitted with reduced ranks. They will be present only by neutral athletes, without uniform or flag or anthems, away from the opening and closing ceremonies, forced into silence or protected by silence, as claimed by the Olympic Committee which wrote the rules. There will be around fifty of them, no more, no team discipline, yet this rigid protocol is not enough. We will only understand what will happen if a Ukrainian faces a Russian when the two choose whether to shake hands, ignore each other, face each other. Up to now every Ukrainian athlete has been categorical, “the Russians are the invaders” and those who do their job are not considered otherwise. We have already seen the embarrassment of the referees in a Fencing World Championship, when Olga Kharlan, multiple medalist, refused to greet her rival Anna Smirnova and was disqualified. Applying the rules or understanding that an unmanageable inconvenience has reached the stage depends on the individuals, on the directives of the federations and on the Five Circles, even if no jurisprudence can be established on this matter. Each intersection has a unique development and Tatami explains it very well. Seeing it will help to detect any possible embarrassment, to intercept the vibrations, to intuit everything that moves behind the scenes of an already emotional ordeal in itself because it represents the realization of entire lives and existences, because it occurs every four years. When it is also loaded with geopolitical chaos it reaches the limits of the nerves. Anything can happen: the most splendid as well as the most annoying.
You can run away from the Games, Andy Diaz did it, born in Havana, now Italian, ready to wear the blue this summer in France, to chase success in the triple jump. He has had citizenship since February 2023 and is counting the days until he can be called up for international matches. He left Cuba just as he was in Tokyo, at the 2021 Games, where he arrived with the Caribbean national team without ever jumping for them and without going back. He fled to Rome, knocked on the door of Fabrizio Donato, triple bronze medalist at London 2012, who practically adopted him and became his coach.
At the Olympics we take sides far beyond the colors we wear. Several athletes of Arab descent have been sanctioned for speaking out in support of Palestine. The Olympics prohibits taking sides for religious or political issues and this rule must also be kept in line with reality; it has recently been changed to accept global demands, such as anti-racism messages. Despite all the flags hanging, the Games blur boundaries and Tatami use this feature. In the film the two opponents, the Iranian and the Israeli, hug each other before the tournament begins. One asks the other about her son, one tells the other that her love story is over because her partner didn’t accept the constant travelling, the perpetual absence in the name of judo, a fight, not chosen at random by the directors: « Only judo could have been the means to define the strength of these women surrounded by men who look the other way while they resist, suffer, bleed, continue to look for ways out.” In the film the two don’t make it to the final. The Iranian denounces the pressure, asks for help. The coach before her tries to mediate, then gives in to courage and runs away too. In fiction everything happens very quickly: the husband of the Iranian judoka leaves Tehran with the child in her arms to cross the border between an elimination round and a semi-final. In reality it is more complicated, but the consequences are the same, as are the surprises.
In the last scene we see the champion and coach on a bus: the sequence follows the beginning except that they have the uniforms of the refugee team. It really exists, it will parade along the Seine on July 26th to tell us that Tatami it’s not just a movie.
2024-03-27 06:02:43
#revolution #tatami #Iranian #Israeli #film #sport #challenges #politics
