Captains of Zaatari: a tender portrait of refugee footballers
“The film is at its best when it offers its own relaxed, exploratory portrait of life in the camp.”
- Reviewed from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
Assertive and determined best friends Fawzi and Mahmoud hope that playing football might find them a way out Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp, in Ali El Arabi’s occasionally rushed, often tender documentary Captains of Zaatari.
The film feels confined to a narrative structure at times, playing out like a showreel of the pair’s experience, and is at its best when it offers its own relaxed, exploratory portrait of life in the camp and the community there.
“We’ve become important,” Mahmoud says when the boys make it to a football training camp in Qatar, an importance that will grow as an outward force to help others where it may not have helped them.