The Passion of Maradona
This weekend was the opening weekend of the 10th International Latino Film Festival in the Bay Area. The festival runs for two weeks at various venues from San Rafael to San Jose featuring a wide variety of feature-length and short films.
The Castro Theater, one of my favorites movie houses in the city, is a host venue and this weekend was featuring the movie ‘Amando a Maradona’ (Loving Maradona). For those who are unfamiliar, Diego Maradona is the legendary soccer player from Argentina who has inspired generations of soccer fans and caused controversy through his politics and drug use.
The 75-minute documentary not only tells the story of his life and rise to heroic icon, it also demonstrates a phenomenon that is hard to put into words: the sheer passion that Argentineans feel for their beloved Maradona. Throughout the film I was trying to imagine a parallel in my own life and the only figure I came up with was Wayne Gretzky. But relating Canadian enthusiasm to Latin American passion is like comparing a light rain to Iguazu Falls.
The film gives you a glimpse of the affection through interviews (one Argentine man was quoted as saying ‘my priorities are my mother, my family and then Maradona’), photos (over 25 men displaying their tattoos of lifelike Maradona drawings) and fan group gatherings (including footage of a ceremony at the Church of Maradona).
My first encounter with this Latino devotion was while I was studying at INSEAD living in a house with 2 Greeks, a Spaniard, a Dutch guy, a Thai, a German-Canadian and an Argentine. Heated discussions would inevitably reveal the most inflammatory remark “Maradona was a coke-head!’, and with that the battles began. An Argentine friend later explained that Porteños (people from Buenos Aires) are taught from an early age which team they are meant to support (Maradona’s team the Boca Juniors or their arch-rivals River Plate), and as such provide their unwavering dedication to that team and its players. To give you an idea of the magnitude of their dedication to the sport - in 1990 when the Argentineans were ’cheated’ out of the title, all school classes were canceled.
To give you a glimpse, I found this short video. To see for yourself check out a ‘Super Clasico’ at the Boca Juniors home stadium, the Bombonera, in Buenos Aires.
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