Football-mad / Fussballverrückt

The goalkeeper: schizophrenic, the forward: psychotic, the defender: depressive. Stefan’s football team is in crisis. Some Saturdays only Denis makes it to the training. Which means none of the other fourteen players have overcome the paralysing effect of their medication or their illness. Bad timing. Stefan has just invited fifteen teams from all over Europe to Munich to the 20th International Tournament of Psychiatric Football. Football-Mad – an insight into a strange world that sometimes seems strangely familiar.

“Director Manuele Deho from Munich is not a football fan. Nevertheless, he has made a football film: “Football-Mad”. He took a year to observe how the coach and the players try to form a team. But the players are real individualists and mentally ill people. The director understood how to gain the trust of his protagonists through his restrained camera work. In this way the film manages to tell an impressive story about life between normality and illness and the power of playing football together and to touch the audience”. www.11-mm.de