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Ache
Balón al Aire
Content / Documentary
Mexico / International
2018
Digital
Context
A Country Chasing a Ball
2018 was a pivotal year for Mexico. Diverse narratives intertwined, and we aimed to recount one of them, inspired by football and society.
Mexico boasts one of the most passionate fan bases globally, and its National Team (featuring a young generation of established footballers playing in European leagues) was set to compete in a group alongside the former world champion, Germany, and two formidable rivals (Sweden and South Korea).
This context provided an opportunity to correlate our country, its challenges, and its potential through the lens of football, yet extending beyond it.
Objective
As part of GOLA, a multidisciplinary collective dedicated to exploring football from various cultural and social perspectives, we sought to be protagonists and participate in the World Cup fervor with a message that would resonate not only with fans but with the entire nation.
Challenge
During a World Cup year, there is an abundance of noise surrounding the National Team, and everyone discusses football. How could we create a high-quality piece of content that would generate interest across all types of audiences, particularly young people? A piece that would transcend the World Cup and serve as a historical and academic testament for years to come.
The Idea
We decided to produce a film that would reflect not only on Mexico’s performance in football World Cups and its impact beyond the purely sporting aspect, but also from a social and cultural angle, to uncover why Mexicans have succeeded in various fields… but not in football.
We sought to discover what lies behind the senior national team’s lack of definitive victories on the field, contrasting it with the development of a winning Mexican mentality.
We produced a documentary structured as a dialogue among the perspectives of various personalities, including former World Cup players Pavel Pardo, Luis García, Rafael Márquez, Jared Borgetti, and Germán Villa, as well as Mexicans who have excelled in different fields, such as Marion Reimers (Mexico’s leading sports journalist, who has built a brilliant career at Fox Sports) and Lorena Ochoa (the former world’s top golfer and LPGA world champion). Also participating were Emmanuel «Meme» del Real and Paco Ayala (keyboardist for Café Tacvba and bassist for Molotov, respectively; undoubtedly two of the most internationally recognized Mexican rock bands), along with Francisco Alanís «Sopitas» (journalist and opinion leader, with one of Mexico’s top-visited websites) and Camilo Lara (musician and key member of the band Instituto Mexicano del Sonido), among other relevant figures.
Mexican society knows no bounds and will soon achieve global triumphs.
