Captains of Za’atari: A Real-Life Tale of Football and Freedom

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B

Underdog stories don’t come much more “under” than the sports documentary Captains of Za’atari by Egyptian filmmaker Ali El Arabi, which follows two young men who live in a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan and who dream of pro football careers.

The setting is Za’atari, a fenced-in city of rudimentary prefab homes that houses almost 80,000 refugees from the Syrian civil war. 

The boys-turned-men, Mahmoud and Fawzi, return to the refugee camp to coach football.

There, teams of boys play soccer in the dirt and dream of fame and wealth like the Portuguese superstar, Cristiano Ronaldo. Sixteen-year-old Mahmoud Dagher lives with his family, and is pushed by his father to get an education. The captain of the camp’s team, Fawzi Qatleesh, lives with his mother and little sister, but their father has been sent to a different camp after being arrested for taking a job outside the camps. 

The fate of the father and bittersweet reconciliation run as a sadder counter-melody to the inspirational soccer drama.

Over the course of the film, scouts from Qatar’s Aspire Sports Academy come looking for teen prospects to join a tournament in Doha. Mahmoud is picked, but Fawzi, born a year later is over-age. For some reason, he is later allowed into the camp and joyously joins his friend, where they share a fancy hotel room “with 24-hour wi-fi”, and a pool. 

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They even meet pro players who give them pep talks, and coaches who upbraid and encourage them, as they endure the heartbreaks of losses and joy of victory just like any other young athletes.

As if from a Hollywood script, there’s a climactic, televised big game, in which we cut between the play on the field and the community back at home, gathered in one room to watch the broadcast, transmitted by a rigged-up satellite dish on the roof.

The game is followed by a press conference, where the teens, in response to journalists’ questions, emphasize that, like all refugees, they want opportunity, not pity. 

The film fast-forwards to several years later, where the young men are back in Za’atari, coaching a new generation of players and passing on the message of hope.

Director El Arabi is a former war journalist who met his subjects in 2015 and followed them over several years, which explains the casual intimacy and careful selection of dramatic moments, compressed into a brisk 71 minutes.

There are plenty of candid moments that feel close to scripted drama:  A family eats dinner by candle-light and talks about its precarious future. Fawzi and Mahmoud, talk about girls while leaning against a wall one chilly evening. 

Were the scenes prepared or did the subjects  become so used to the film crew that they forgot its presence? 

One suspects a bit of both: The film was a kind of benign conspiracy to show the power of hope and friendship and counter-act the image of refugees as pitiful victims of history.

Captains of Za’atari. Directed by Ali El Arabi. With Mahmoud Dagher and Fawzi Qatleesh. Captains of Za’atari opens Friday at the Cineplex cinema, Yonge and Dundas.