The Ball Game
The Forbidden Team – A Documentary
A Review
Procucers -Balls Production and Karim Stoumann
Directors – Rasmus Dinesen and Arnold Krøigaard
Khentse Norbu showed moviegoers the passion of Tibetan monks for football with bits of humour and sentiments intertwined in The Cup at a time when the world was slowly recovering from the 1998 world cup fever. The Tibetans in the movie were just mere fans supporting countries which did not belong to them.
Sonam Wangyal leads the first national football team of Tibet in the first ever-international match against Greenland in The Forbidden Team. He is not an actor, his team comprises of real players. “Even if you hit a good kick, you do that for your nation”, says Karma Ngodup, the manager of the team.
The film, through a football-loving monk who meditates in the nearby hill and who watches the national team practice twice a day for a month, outlines the similarities between the game of football and Buddhism. In football, the ball is controlled and in Buddhism it is the mind. Combination between players is important to win the game from your opponent, so is a philosophical system in your mind to keep negative karma at bay.
Produced by Balls Productions and Karim Stoumann and directed by Rasmus Dinesen and Arnold Krøigaard, the documentary tells a story of a football team representing a nation wiped off from the world map in 1949.
‘This looks like a battlefield’, says Danish coach Jens Espensen who trains the selected squad after seeing the only football ground of Dharamsala battered by rain and frequent passing of cows, dogs and local villagers. Ironically, the first national team will hold its three-week training here for their international debut. Espensen describes the squad as “extremely poor” and fears complete humiliation against Greenland.
But it is too early for the players to rejoice. They are not sure to make it to Denmark as their Identity Certificates (travel documents for Tibetans to travel abroad) may take more time than they wish. And rightly so, only eight players have their documents ready to apply for Danish visa. They have good players but not a good team.
A nightmare rips the Tibetan National Football Association (TNFA). They are short of players in their first international match. Tibetans in Switzerland send few players to fill the vacuum created by the Identity Certificate hurdle.
The substitute goalkeeper and a few others miss the trip because their travel documents are not out. His determination and will to play for his country forces his eyes to shed tears of despair. And he sits outside the field for the rest of the training session watching others whose travel documents give them no trouble. The film has an emotional oscillation, from joy to desolation, from happiness to frustration, thus creating a pendulum of emotions.
The day everyone has been waiting for finally arrives after some diplomatic tussle between organisers, FIFA and the Chinese Embassy. FIFA says it is not an official match and cannot be played in a stadium registered under it. Chinese Embassy says it is not football, but politics and threatens that China will stop its shrimp import from Greenland. Organisers say it does not matter, official or unofficial, it is an international. The coach of Greenland tells a Danish television, “we asked for a football match, not politics”.
Michael Nybrant, the man who initiated this game, is summoned to the Chinese Embassy who tells him that 180 countries approve Chinese claim over Tibet. But no one can stop a football match which ran into controversy even before sale of tickets. So the landmark game between Greenland and Tibet takes place at a stadium over which FIFA has no authority.
Nominated for Nordic Competition Programme of the Nordisk Panorama film festival, Malmö, and the winner of the audience award “Alleanza Assicurazioni” at the “Sport movies & TV festival” held in Milano, Italy, Forbidden Team unveils the political taboo in sports, and breaks the stereotypical notion about the Tibetans being staunch Buddhists who lack fighting spirit and the instinct of competition. Danish Magazine Jyllands Posten calls it a thrilling little flash of sunlight in an otherwise dark and tragic conflict.
Supporters cheer in thousands amid a sea of Tibetan national flag and Greenland’s national flag. But they have not bought the ticket to the match to support one team but the event itself. In the dressing room, something that is usually unexpected of any international match is seen as the Tibetan squad recites Buddhists prayers for success. They don’t want to win by defeating others as it is against the Buddhist philosophy. If there is a way to win without defeating others, Tibet will go for it.
How good a football team the Arctic Greenland is still a mystery for the Himalayan Tibetans. The stadium fills with a roar of applause as Lobsang Norbu of Tibet just creates a history by breaking the deadlock between the two teams but it was short-lived. At halftime the score is leveled. And equally short-lived is the mystery as Greenland takes the game away from the Tibetan side by three goals. The match ends 4-1 to Greenland’s favour but the Tibetans emerge victorious in every sense of the word. Their defeat in their first international match was accepted with dignity and in true spirit of sportsmanship.
The film depicts one of those rare moments in history of international sports where every competitor leaves the field with a deep sense of pride and joy.