Ted's Polish-Mexican Page: <i>Offside</i>

23 maja 2007

Offside

I caught a movie called Offside this weekend with Katie Bolger. Yeah, it's a soccer movie so Katie called me.

Anyway, the movie is about half a dozen soccer fans who try to sneak into the Iran-Bahrain game during the last World Cup qualifiers. The trouble with these fans? They are women, so aren't allowed into games in post-revolutionary Iran.

Recently, women have been allowed into other public events in Iran, but soccer matches are a glaring exception.

The women have a tremendous passion for the game, and know far more about it than their guards do. In fact, the guards aren't even that enthusiastic about enforcing this rule and are constantly talking with eachother about how much time they have left before they can go back to their other lives. It's one weakness of authoritarian regimes: oddball rules that no one understands enforced by people who aren't very motivated.

Anyway, I now know the term for corner kick in Farsi is, well, corner.

The movie is still playing at the Loft, right down the street from me.

Oddly, the director, Jafar Panahi, was allowed to film this movie at the actual game, but he has not been allowed to show this movie in Iran. You can read an interview with him here.