The Black Star

Bart is courteously visiting a black lady in a small Nigerian village. He is white, Belgian, a manager in the professional soccer industry. He has come to buy Indy, 16, the lady´s promising son, to sell him to a Belgian club. Indy discovers Europe, Belgium. In the depths of the Flemish region, he is invited to dinner by the directors of a club. He knows no one, believes in God, speaks neither French nor Flemish, and just a little English. He asks if that is fish on the plate, they answer, “no, it is potatoes.” Indy is submitted to physical tests. He runs on a moving walkway. Is he a horse or a man? The manager nicknames him “my colt.” The discussions about his future take place in Flemish. Very quickly, Indy feels lost and alone. But the manager insists he is “like a father” to him. In the next months, the club never says “no” to Indy, but they never say “yes” to him either. Emmannuel Riche and his crew tracked the unlikely dream of this young African to become a star in the western world. The film delves into the ambiguous wings of the soccer business, to the heart of the most secret and gloomy trade between managers and club owners. No essential episode escapes the watchfulness of the filmmaker. There is no journalistic comment, just the rough painting of a new market for modern black slaves. This documentary is much more than a film about sport: this is a pertinent political analysis of neo-colonialism, complete with paternalism and nasty tricks. This is one in a critical series of four documentaries about professional soccer, co-produced and broadcast by Belgian public television during the world championship in France in June / July 1998, at a time when many television stations were exhorting overall the hysterical soccer mania.