Too much football can drive you crazy. That's one of the lessons you learn from this deadpan hilarious documentary from Romanian new wave master Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest, Police, Adjective; The Treasure).
After fracturing his fibula in a 1987 game, former Romanian soccer star and current bureaucrat Laurențiu Ginghină now dreams of radically revising his beloved sport’s rules to reduce injuries and, in turn, revolutionize it. In his utopian vision for the sport, he's cut corners (literally), got rid of the off-side rule and radically cut back on running, believing that the ball should do the moving...
Whatever you make of Ginghină's Football 3.0, and whether we care to draw wider political parallels or not, his idealism is infectious, and the possibilities are truly endless...
"Some people believe soccer is a matter of life and death. But like legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, the lovably crestfallen Laurentiu Ginghină, subject of Corneliu Porumboiu’s wonderful, drolly humane new documentary Infinite Football, might assert that it’s much more important than that." Jessica Kiang, Variety
"One of the most original and visionary documentary films to have emerged recently..." Richard Brody, The New Yorker
"Hilarious and heartbreaking. Porumboiu’s execution renders it irresistible." Giovanni Marchini Camia, Sight & Sound