Sports is the new politics at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival

Faizal Khan
In the beginning of Anurag Kashyap’s new film Mukkabaaz (The Brawler), the lead character is presented with his first chance to impress the girl he has fallen in love with. He mumbles his phone number and adds for good measure, “Save it as Tyson.” Shravan Kumar Singh is a boxer from Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, who wants to become the Mike Tyson of India. But he must first fight corrupt administrators, caste and class barriers and the common ambition to land a railway job in the nearest town, before he gets into the ring. Mukkabaaz, which had its world premiere at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) earlier this week, is part of a new trend in which filmmakers around the world are using sports as a medium to explore tensions in the society.

Mukkabaaz is joined by a slew of sports films at the Toronto festival this year, almost all of them based on real events. The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing is the background of Stronger, while Molly’s Game stars Jessica Chastain as an Olympian skier drawn into the sleazy world of gambling. The festival opened last Thursday with Borg/McEnroe, on the epic rivalry between tennis icons Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. “Sports has drama, uncertainty, spontaneity, and risk. It has high stakes like politics,” says TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey.

Track & Life
American Aaron Sorkin, who debuts as a director after writing scripts for films like The Social Network, Moneyball and Steve Jobs, handles the failure of an athlete in Molly’s Game. The film adapts the autobiography of Molly Bloom, who went flying out of US Olympics trials after a freak skiing accident. The failure sends Bloom into high-stakes poker game involving actors and bankers, nearly destroying her life. The film also stars Mandela actor Idris Elba. In Stronger, Hollywood actor Jake Gyllenhaal plays the role Jeff Bauman, a factory worker who lost both his legs in the Boston bombing while waiting to woo his girlfriend he had recently broken up with for a third time. Bauman, who wrote a book on his struggle to survive, came to the film’s premiere in Toronto last week. “I can’t be thrown up on the red carpet like Jake Gyllenhaal,” he joked. “What do I do? Walk?” Gyllenhaal paid the ultimate tribute to the double amputee, saying he had finally played the role of a super hero, after years of questions over when he would become a Bat-man or Superman.



In pic: Emma Stone plays American tennis legend Billie Jean King in Battle of the Sexes

Borg/McEnroe, directed by Swedish filmmaker Janus Metz, focuses on the 1980 Wimbledon championship, the highlight of one of the fiercest rivalries in the history of sports. American actor Shia LaBeouf plays the role of the “rebel” McEnroe while Swedish actor Sverrir Gudnason is the “gentleman” Borg. “I wanted the film to transcend sports,” says Metz about the story of the first rock stars of tennis. It does. The film shows how two individuals, who drive themselves to the edge and beyond, had many things in common deep down. Considered an iceberg, Borg emerges as a volcano waiting to erupt, and McEnroe turns out to be a tactician, who brings touch, feel and sensitivity to the game. Borg, who won the 1980 Wimbledon for the fifth time defeating McEnroe in five sets, retires next year, after losing to the American. But he soon returns as the best man at McEnroe’s wedding.


In pic: American tennis coach Nick Bollettieri in Love Means Zero

Class & Gender
“It is not just about sports, you can explore so many other things in a sports film,” says Thom Powers, documentary programmer at the Toronto festival, which has screened many sports-related films in the past. In 2013, one of the festival favourites was 9.79*, a documentary on the doping scandal of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. A year later, disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong was the subject of The Program, a feature film on the controversy of performance-enhancing drugs in sports.


In pic: A scene from the movie Stronger, based on the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings

Bailey, who selected Kashyap’s Mukkabaaz after a visit to Mumbai last July, was impressed with the manner in which the film brings politics and sports together. “The film combines the thrill of a sporting event with a deep analysis of the social and political context around sports,” says Bailey. “It examines class and caste in India and how these affect the careers of athletes.” In the film, a Brahmin boxing administrator muzzles the Rajput hero’s ambitions to win the national championship and marry his niece.


In pic: Borg/McEnroe by Swedish filmmaker Janus Metz opened the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival.(L-R) Director Janus Metz Pedersen, actors Shia LaBeouf and Stellan Skarsgard.

Another tennis drama in Toronto is Love Means Zero, a documentary by Jason Kohn on influential coach Nick Bollettieri, whose tennis academy produced male and female champions with a combined 180 Grand Slam titles. Bollettieri, who was called a “professional tyrant”, launched his tennis academy in Florida, the first in the world. Tennis stars Andre Agassi, Jim Courier and Boris Becker came out champions under the watchful eyes of Bollettieri, also criticised for ruining the careers of many other players. Tennis is, again, the topic in Battle of the Sexes, a feature film starring Academy Award-winning actor Emma Stone and Steve Carell. Stone plays American legend Billie Jean King, an outspoken critic of lesser prize money for women in tennis. The film, scripted by Simon Beaufoy, who won the Best Screenplay Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire, recreates the famous 1973 match between King and and former men’s champion Bobby Riggs. King won the match, considered one of the earliest battles for equality in sports. I, Tonya deals with the 1994 scandal in figure skating when an American medal hopeful was brutally attacked. The festival has two more sports films — the Carter Effect, about Canadian basketball hero Vince Carter, while A Skin So Soft follows six bodybuilders in the Canadian city of Quebec.


In pic: Anurag Kashyap’s film Mukkabaaz (The Brawler) is about corruption in Indian sports

(The writer is a freelance journalist)