The Second Game

“This film is a football match between two Bucharest rival teams, Steaua and Dinamo, which took place on the 3rd of December, 1988,” says Corneliu Porumboiu, the acclaimed director of Police, Adjective. “My father was the referee. We rewatched the match together, some 25 years later.” This historic game, presented in its original televised form with commentary from Porumboiu and his father, proves to contain a not-so-hidden political resonance. Behind the archival images, the off-screen commentaries, and the wry parallels between soccer and cinema lies the true subject of this ambitious enterprise: the elusive ways in which we relate to the past and, to a certain extent, to our parents. An Art of the Real 2014 selection.