Here is an unusual film release, perfect for lockdown. Sadio Mané, star footballer with Liverpool and Senegal has produced a film about his life and his football career. It is widely available on release via either of its two partners Rakuten TV in Europe and Canal+ in Francophone Africa. In the ‘Rest of the World’ it is available on Pay Per View at low rates (less than $2.00) see https://www.made-in-senegal.com All PPV monies will go to charities.
As a film this is a conventional biopic covering the childhood and ‘football journey’ of its subject. As a form of media event it is something more complex. Most global football clubs are now international brands with their own media production outfits, including their own TV channels/stations as well as associated social media outlets and fan operations. Over the last twelve months I’ve watched many programmes from Liverpool FCTV and gained a certain kind of access to the inner life of the club and some of the players (a handful of players are used in these films – many others are only glimpsed in the background). I feared that this film about Sadio Mané would be just a feature length version of these club videos. But it is much more than that.
The production company is the Berlin-based Vertical Social Club, a company focusing on offering a whole range of media services for sports clients in terms of branding, social media etc. on a global scale. This film meant working with Sadio Mané’s commercial brand sponsor New Balance and with Arena 11 Sports Group, another German company. What Arena 11 actually does I’m not sure but it appears to involve players’ agents and contracts and is linked to the transfer market. The film is credited to Mehdi Benhadj-Djilali,
Peta Jenkin and Jermain Raffington. Peta Jenkin appears to be the director with most experience in this kind of documentary.
But enough of the institutional stuff. Does Sadio Mané have a story interesting enough to fill 72 minutes? You bet he does. Sadio was born in a village in Southern Senegal in the Casamance region. His father was an Imam in the village where subsistence farming is still the main form of employment. His father died when Sadio was seven and he was brought up within his extended family who have a collective belief in education. It’s noticeable that Mané today speaks fluent French whereas the older members of his family speak their local language Diola (or perhaps the more widely-used Wolof?). Sadio wanted to be a footballer from early childhood but the family disapproved so at 15 he made the difficult journey to the capital Dakar with a friend to contact formal football hierarchies and on his return negotiated one more year of schooling before he joined ‘Generation Foot Academy’ in Dakar from which he was eventually signed by the French Ligue 2 club Metz.
This is a remarkable story. Later in the film, Sadio recalls his father’s death was partly the result of a lack of hospital facilities locally. He also refers to the ‘rebels’ in the region who have been fighting for independence for many years and whose actions interrupted funeral arrangements for his father. When Sadio arrived in Metz aged 18, a serious injury threatened to halt his career after only a few months but he recovered from surgery and subsequently played for RB Salzburg in Austria and Southampton in the English Premier League before signing for Liverpool in 2016. Now, as a winner of the European Champion’s League, UEFA Super Cup and World Club Championship, he is one of the most valuable players in the world.
The film is shot in 1:2.35 and mostly follows its subject through three sections – his early life and early career, success with Liverpool in the Champion’s League final of 2019 and the last section covering his return to Senegal after the final in Madrid, his time with his extended family and the ultimate disappointment of Senegal’s defeat in the Africa Cup of Nations by Algeria in a penalty shoot-out in Cairo. No footage of aspects of Sadio’s childhood exist so the production used the animation company Jump to create drawn animations that I think work very well. The style reminded me of the work of French animator/director Michel Ocelot on the ‘Kirikou’ films.
Sadio Mané speaks direct to camera in a relaxed manner and in his own film he seems at ease. He seems like a private person and apart from his agent Björn Bezemer, with whom he has a close relationship, we see him mostly with his extended family, including his uncle with whom he has built a house in Dakar, and in his village back in Casamance. The film ends with him opening the school he has built and the hospital that will be completed soon. He repeats his family’s words to him about valuing education above all. The young man has done well, learning a great deal outside school. But it isn’t easy. He is under pressure, both as an important player in the national team and as a local role model in Casamance.
This is a German film so Jürgen Klopp speaks German, Sadio speaks French and his family’s local language. Much of the rest of the film is in English (or at least I think it is – I’m so used to reading subtitles that I sometimes don’t notice). The Liverpool players who appear are, I think, all non-English players. Virgil Van Dijk, Gini Wijnaldum and Mo Salah speak in English but Naby Keïta, who comes from Guinea and in some ways is closest to Mané in terms of background, speaks in French. Selecting these players to comment seems logical for several reasons but they are not spelt out and I would like to have learned a little more about Sadio’s interaction with the wider Liverpool FC community. But then, I’m a fan and the film does include the shot above in which Sadio stands next to a quote by Bill Shankly, so I can’t complain.
The Case for Global Film 