Synopsis
Zico came to Iceland from Morocco to seek his fortune. After ten years running his own small business, Zico goes bankrupt. Desperate and depressed he decides to fire up his amateur team called Africa United and take them into the semi-professional 3rd division. He calls upon immigrants all over Iceland, players from Morocco, Nigeria, Colombia, Serbia, Kosovo, Gambia and Guinea to help realize his vision. The road to success is rocky and mid-season Africa United has lost all games; their best player walks out and Zico decides to meet his role-model in football in England for advice. Having done so, he comes back with fresh ideas on how to approach his goals in life and football.
Grapevine Magazine | Paul F. Nikolov Review
The word “documentary” doesn’t usually bring comedy to mind, but Ólaf Jóhannesson manages to make these two worlds combine beautifully in this story of Iceland’s first all-foreigner football team to make it to the third division.
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Filmmakers Word | Benedikt Johannesson, Producer
“I guess it started when I was enslaved by my big brother to shoot this football team for three months,” says young filmmaker Benedikt Johannesson when asked about the starting point of Africa United, a docu flick by Olaf de Fleur Johannesson. “I basically had very limited directions of what to do. My brother Olaf just told me to go and shoot, with somewhat carless attention. I always thought that he was just being kind to his little brother, by making me do “something”. I guess his attention was tuned up when he saw my summer results from the shoot.”
Watch the 80 minute documentary online for only €3
Filmmakers Word | Olaf de Fleur, Director
“The beginning, yes, I give all that credit to my little bro, Benedikt, the material he nosed up enabled us to make a fantastic trailer, show it, and get sponsors, co-producers and whatnot. I always wanted to make a film about football, and through the years I´ve seen many bad films about this beautiful game. Instead of risking addition to that misery, my colleges (Ragnar Santos and Benedikt Johannesson) and myself decided to find an authentic football team to see the “real” thing happen on the screen. I had known the team Africa United, played with them for several years and when the manager Zico Zakaria decided to enter the 3rd division it all came by itself. The contrasts where obvious, an amateur team with players from over 10 countries hoping to succeed in the semi-professional 3rd division in Iceland. The filming process took over 3 years in total, shot at various locations in Iceland, Serbia, Marocco, England and Germany.”
Olaf de Fleur and Ragnar Santos visit Yamagata Film Festival in Japan with their film Africa United.
YIDFF Interview | Olaf de Fleur & Ragnar Santos
By Nakajima Asami & Hikino Nagisa
Q: What were your intentions when you were filming? Did you have a lot of leeway during the shoot?
Ragnar Santos: I was pretty much able to do everything that I wanted to do, without any restrictions. Sometimes the things the director wanted to do and I wanted to do were a little bit at odds, and so we talked it through and compromised. Even so, for example we both thought it was a good idea to start using the small camera. Early on, we’d realized that things weren’t going well with the large camera. The players on the team weren’t able to move naturally. A few weeks into the shooting, we started filming with the small camera. And then they forgot that the film crew was around. We shoot from two to three years, so during that time they got used to us filming and stopped paying attention to the camera.
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In any sports documentary you want to see a dedicated team of believers battling the odds to triumph in the face of adversity. And adversity is exactly what football manager Zico (no, not that one) found when he entered his team Afrika into the deild karla (Iceland’s third tier of football).
