After making its international debut in August at the Kitzbühel Film Festival, Romanian directors Adina Popescu and Iulian-Manuel Ghervas’ documentary Eagles from Ţaga [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] is premiering domestically in the Romanian competition of the 29^th Astra Film Festival. Exploring the trials and tribulations of a football team in a Transylvanian village, the documentary is a sharp, endearing look at perseverance and fortitude.

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From the very first shot, we meet Mister Nelu, the manager (or factotum, rather) of the football team in the village of Ţaga. We see him preparing the pitch for that Sunday’s match, but the markings he draws on the grass with an old machine are far from perfect. We also hear him worrying about how many players will show up for the match, as gathering an 11-player team proves to be quite a challenge, especially in summer, when the players are easily tempted away by weddings and barbecue parties. When the match finally begins, the players are there, but their performance is lacklustre: we soon find out that the team, Eagles from Ţaga, is far from soaring, as it hasn’t won a single match in two seasons and is actually the worst team in the entire Romanian championship in terms of its progress.

It may ostensibly be about football, but the documentary is more ambitious than that, as it is an invitation to explore the idea of failure and perseverance. Some of the audience members might laugh at the players’ unprofessionalism, at their flabby bellies and at their eternal complaints that “the referees have stolen us”, but even the fact that a small village like Ţaga has a football team is a success in itself. Underfunded and the laughing stock of the Romanian championship, Mister Nelu’s Eagles should be appreciated just for being there. Giving up is always the easiest thing to do, while showing up is quite a different story.

Mister Nelu is without doubt the hero here, as he is the heart of the team. At 68, he is wise enough to know that without significant financial support, the team will never improve, as for many of the players, the weekly defeat is either a chore or an obligation. But Mister Nelu perseveres, and we can only root for him, while letting ourselves be persuaded by Ghervas’s observational camerawork to ponder the film’s main theme, which is: what is a life well lived? Perhaps Mister Nelu dreams of a win, but he also knows that the mere fact that the team gathers on the pitch is something that should be celebrated, even when it is a source of frustration. “You’d think someone had tied their feet together,” says Mister Nelu as he explodes after a particularly disappointing performance, in one of the film’s many endearing comedic moments.

With a running time of only 74 minutes, Eagles from Ţaga does not have time to develop other characters besides its protagonist, but spending more time with this man who refuses to accept defeat comes with a few life lessons that should be cherished. At one point, we see him looking at pictures from his youth, when he was a promising football player himself. It would have been easy to let himself be overcome by nostalgia and “what ifs”, but Mister Nelu knows better and focuses on what can be done, be it reading out loud a carefully written exposé of the team’s evolution in front of the village’s Sports and Culture Committee, or patiently counting his hens. Perhaps Mister Nelu considers himself a loser, but there are so many aspects of the documentary that actually present him as a winner, and we end up feeling quite jealous of him.

Eagles from Ţaga was produced by We Are Basca (Romania), and co-produced by Leon Productions (Slovakia) and Adjust Media (Romania). After the national premiere at Astra, the film will screen in Bucharest, at the 13^th edition of Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest.