In recent years, Spanish films have sprung up, becoming a whirlwind breaking through the mainstream Hollywood-dominated film market.
In 2017, the Spanish suspense thriller "The Invisible Guest", with its high reputation, finally completed the counterattack on the basis of only 4% of the first-day films, and won 170 million box office in the mainland, and also successfully reached the top as the highest box office in the mainland. Spanish movies .
In fact, in addition to commercial films, Spanish films have always made breakthroughs in various genres, and they have also achieved many dazzling achievements internationally.
The literary film "Summer of 1993" is highly rated in the industry and is almost one of the best children's films in recent years. It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won the Best Debut Award.
The Goya Award for Best Animation "The Forgotten Child" boldly broke through the romantic setting of the fairy tale world, pointed directly to the cruel reality, and used the darkest metaphor to allude to the unspeakable ugliness and filth of the adult world.
And in the pioneering experimental works, Spanish films are not absent. A "Skin" is set with heavy tastes, reflecting on the ubiquitous discrimination...
There are many excellent movies in Spain, but very few can actually make it to the big screen in the mainland. This time, Elephant wants to make a small attempt. In order to break the situation that American films dominate the rivers and lakes in theaters, we have chosen a Spanish phenomenon-level film for everyone - "Basketball Champion".
"Basketball Champion" was the Spanish box office champion in 2018. Although there is a time difference between our viewing action and the Spanish audience, we finally have a chance to see what the real Spanish fans love. Letting good movies meet the right audience is the purpose of Elephant. We, who are committed to focusing on the market, have always regarded diversity as an important consideration.
Of course, the selection of "Basketball Champion" is not only because its quality has been confirmed by the market, but also because of the special group it pays attention to - people with intellectual disabilities .
The story of the film is inspired by a real Spanish honorary team, the Aderes de Burjassot basketball team. The basketball team is made up of all disabled people, including some female players. And this legendary team almost swept the 12 basketball leagues (specially set up for the disabled) championships between 1999 and 2014 .
The movie "Basketball Champion" tells the story of a basketball coach who was punished for community labor for drunk driving and forced to coach a basketball team for the mentally handicapped. Some of the characters and training details in the film refer to real events. For example, the training time of athletes is always fixed on Tuesday and Thursday.
What is more noteworthy is that the actors who play the team members in this film are also intellectually disabled people. But both in the film and in real life, they are extra cute.
The cute person in the film is Juan Ma. He likes small animals and hugs people.
In real life, he is a big 32-year-old boy. He suffered a severe cerebral hemorrhage when he was born, so he suffered from encephalitis and had to live with the disease all his life. He was diagnosed with a 70 per cent disability and also had serious problems with his eyes.
However, he is completely self-reliant and his job is to make and package handicrafts. Not only that, he also had his own dreams like ordinary children since he was a child. In his fantasy world, he's an actor, although that's ridiculous in the eyes of others. However, he was never willing to limit his possibilities because of his physical defects. His favorite sentence was "let me try it" . Fortunately, he finally came across this film that belonged to him and won his first audience.
The only female player in the film, Kronte, has the iconic face of a patient with Down syndrome. In the play, she is the king of poisonous tongues. On the field, she is less than 1.5 meters tall, and she is a good player in making technical fouls. It is no problem for a girl to overturn a big guy.
In real life, her story is also extremely inspiring. She successfully graduated from university and became an assistant in environmental education.
Every team member in the film has their own experiences and stories. They seem to be born incomplete, but they are far more complete than we imagined.
In fact, the meaning of "Basketball Champion" is to make us rethink: Are the so-called "sound" and "disabled" only limited to the body? Are we as able-bodied people really more complete than the so-called disabled people?
In the film, there is also such a pretentious able-bodied person, that is, the coach Mark who is forced to coach the disabled basketball team.
Playing Mark is the Spanish native actor Javier Gutierrez, who won the Spanish Goya Award twice for "The Writer" and "The Swamp". This time, he plays a middle-aged basketball coach with character flaws, childhood shadows, and a messy life.
Mark, a failed middle-aged man, his marriage is in crisis, and his coaching career has been suspended because he lost control and beat others on the court. Not only that, he used alcohol to drown his sorrows, and then he was arrested for drunk driving. The coach of the dignified professional college league was reduced to training a group of disabled people who could not even shoot the ball.
But in this process, who really educated whom?
The movie "Basketball Champion" was not just a box office success, it won the Goya Award, Spain's top film award, for best picture last year.
The audience was moved by the film. Because the stories in and outside the movie are too shocking, and such shock comes from the power of life itself.
In the movie, a group of disabled people overcome their physical defects and communication barriers, break through themselves again and again to create miracles, and use every teamwork and successful shot to prove that passion is not for young people, and competition is not the patent of healthy people.
Outside of movies, people who have always been regarded as marginalized people and special groups, a group of people who were destined to be insulated from the profession of "actor" from birth, used their performance to win the box office and applause, and beat them violently. shattered mainstream prejudice.
What's more valuable is that "Basketball Champion" is a light comedy. The sweat and hardships experienced by the players in training and the opposition and prejudice in life are all resolved one by one in laughter and scolding. The movie shows us the legend of this special basketball team in a more warm and friendly way.
A journey born with suffering can still be turned into a light comedy full of sunshine and laughter. Life is hard, but not hard.
As the girl who played Corante used to say: I only have one life, and I am alive today, so I will live like this.
On March 17th, "Basketball Champion" will be screened in advance in Elephant, only this one day.
"Basketball Champion" is a brand new attempt of the elephant, and time is tight, but we are willing to fight for such a special movie. Up to now, everyone in the Elephant's team is still working overtime for the smooth screening of the film. We hope that this film can be seen by more people, and even more hope that the groups in the film can be paid attention to by more people.
Looking forward to the day when we can no longer label their names with physical disabilities, and they can become actors, writers, singers...anything they only dare to imagine in their dreams today.
Looking forward to the day when the words "intellectually disabled" in the title of this article will no longer constitute a reversal.
Because we are all created equal, and because we are no different.
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