"One Ball Fixes the Country" is a true story

The English title of the film "One Ball Fixes the Country" is thethirdhalf, but the translation of the Chinese gives it a heavier meaning. How do football and the country hook up? On the official website of the film, there is such an introduction: This is a movie about football. But in the film, the meaning of football goes far beyond the sport itself. The film "One Ball In the Face" is based on a true story that takes place in Macedonia during World War II.

A beautiful Jewish girl living in Macedonia falls in love with a young man of non-Jewish descent who is the striker of a Macedonian football club. Against the backdrop of World War II, the Macedonian football club hired a German coach of Jewish descent. Football and love, nation and war, meet in this film.

The film is from Macedonia. Macedonia is small, but it has had good movies. Speaking of macedonian films, in 1994, the third year after Macedonia's independence, there was a film called "The Rainstorm Is Coming", which won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival and was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This "One Goal In the Mountains" also represented Macedonia in the competition for best foreign language film at the 85th Academy Awards.

The Republic of Macedonia is a landlocked country located in the southern balkan peninsula of southeastern Europe, bordered by Bulgaria to the east, Serbia to the north, Albania to the west, and Greece to the south, and was originally part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and declared its independence in 1991 after the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This inland, mountainous national capital, Skopje, is also the largest city in Macedonia. The population of Macedonia is around 2.2 million, and the official language is Macedonian. The name Macedonia has a broad and narrow meaning. Speaking of the broad sense, there may be some viewers who like to see ancient Greek mythology and will be familiar with the concept of "Macedonia". Alexander the Great and his Macedonian Empire referred to the frontier regions of the northern part of ancient Greek civilization. This Macedonian Empire conquered Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt, and other places in the 4th century BC, spreading Greek civilization throughout the Middle East. In other words, a large part of today's northern Greece is called Macedonia. Another meaning of "Macedonia" refers to the Republic of Macedonia that we refer to today.

On an English-language website, there was a message from an audience member from Macedonia who wrote: If you don't know the history of Macedonia, watching this film may cause doubts, but once you know what the Macedonian people experienced in World War II, then watching this movie, your perception will be very different. This viewer from Macedonia, at the end of that message, even apologetically said, please forgive me for not speaking English well, but please listen to the Macedonian story.

During World War II, Greece and Yugoslavia were Allies, Bulgaria joined the Axis camp dominated by Germany, and after Greece and Yugoslavia were occupied by Germany, Bulgaria divided most of Macedonia. So, in the next movie you want to see, it's not German, it's Bulgarian. The Macedonians, who lived under Bulgarian rule, were indomitable and rebellious. This "One Ball Fixes the Country" is a story that takes place in such a background.

In 1929, the club team named Macedonia, which is to be shown in the film, was founded in Skopje, the largest city in Macedonia. At that time, the members of this team were all children from some wealthy families in Skopje, and they formed this team out of love of football. After Bulgaria took over Macedonia in 1941, the clubs in Macedonia ceased to exist, but Bulgaria at that time required Macedonia to have its own clubs to participate in the Bulgarian League, so some of the more respected people in Macedonia were gathered, including lawyers and judges. At that time, some people had difficulties about how the name of the club should be, and one of them said, why don't we call it Macedonia? As a result, the club, named after the country, participated in the Bulgarian Football League.

The German coach took the Macedonian club to beat 18 teams in the Bulgarian Football League. However, in that historical context, their title was cancelled, and although they won 2:1 against their opponents, they were finally ruled invalid and the score was forcibly rewritten to 0:3. On that day, the headline in all the newspapers was, they lost. But when they took the train back to Macedonia, they were called "the 11 best men on the macedonian land."

In this movie, we can go back more than 70 years ago, to see when the football field was not yet a green field, to see when the scoreboard needed to be hung artificially, to see when the player's shoes needed to be carefully crafted by the shoemaker, to see when football was not so commercial, to feel the purest kind of touch that football brought to people.

August 30 at 22:07cctv-6 movie channel to meet you "One Ball to Fix the Country", August 31 at 15:24 pm "Good Film Appointment" Sunday Film Review Edition continues wonderfully.