It was supposed to be the crowning moment of the 1985 football season: the European Cup Final between English champions Liverpool and Italy’s Juventus, hosted in Belgium’s Heysel Stadium. But a day that began with huge anticipation and excitement spiralled out of control when rival fans confronted each other before a ball had even been kicked, leading to one of the darkest hours in the history of professional sports…
Belgian-Romanian filmmaker Teodora Ana Mihai dramatizes a tragic story of violence, hubris, and incompetence that centers on two fictional characters: Luca (Matteo Simoni), a young Italian football journalist with family in the stands; and Marie (Violet Braeckman), press attaché to her father, the mayor of Brussels (Josse De Pauw). Leaning into the nervy docu-disaster movie mode, Mihai ingeniously meshes news footage of the escalating crisis with recreations of the cynical politicking going on, unseen, in the backrooms of the stadium. This is an intense, harrowing drama that resonates with our own troubled times.
Community Partner
Violet Braeckman, Matteo Simoni, Josse De Pauw, Fabrizio Rongione, Paolo Calabresi, Bobby Schofield
Belgium/Netherlands/Germany
2026
In Dutch, French, English, and Italian with English subtitles
At Alliance Française & International Village
At Fifth Ave
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits & Director
Producer
Hans Everaert
Screenwriter
Lode Desmet, Isabelle Darras, Teodora Ana Mihai
Cinematography
Marius Panduru
Editor
Bert Jacobs
Production Design
Hendrik Van Kets
Original Music
Anna Katharina Bauer
Teodora Ana Mihai
Teodora Ana Mihai is a Belgian-Romanian director born in Bucharest who is known for her blend of social relevance and audiovisual poetry. She gained international attention with her debut documentary Waiting for August (2014), which won a number of awards and received a European Film Award nomination. Her first fiction feature, La Civil (2021), was developed at Cannes’ Cinéfondation, was co-produced by the Dardennes brothers and Cristian Mungiu, and won the Prix de l’Audace at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. Her second feature, Traffic (2024), won the Warsaw Grand Prix and was Romania’s Oscar entry for 2025.
Filmography: Waiting for August (2014); La Civil (2021); Traffic (2024)
Photo by Sabina Costinel
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