‘Umbrella Men’s’ John Barker Prepping ‘Last Dance’-Style Docuseries About South Africa’s 1996 Championship Soccer Squad (EXCLUSIVE)
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South African filmmaker John Barker (“Bunny Chow,” “Umbrella Men”) is developing a six-episode, “Last Dance”-style documentary series about the South African national soccer team’s stirring triumph at the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations, a landmark moment for a young nation still celebrating its transition to democracy after the end of apartheid.
“Bafana the Boys,” which has already been acquired by South African streaming service eVOD and is currently being circled by global platforms, features interviews with legendary players from the championship squad, such as team captain Neil Tovey and star midfielder Doctor Khumalo. Barker is in talks with icons of the international game, including French players Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry — who scored his first international goal against South Africa — as well as coaching legends Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho.
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Produced by Joel Phiri and Athos Kyriakides for Known Associates Entertainment, “Bafana the Boys” also includes interviews with former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who reflects on the influence of Nelson Mandela on the team’s magical run, as well as intimate footage with the director’s late father, Clive Barker, who coached the team to glory.
Speaking to Variety at the Joburg Film Festival, where his Toronto-premiering “The Umbrella Men: Escape From Robben Island” plays this week, Barker described the show as a “hell of an emotional roller-coaster.”
“It’s very strange for me, and very emotional,” he said. “I’m telling a story about my dad, and how he impacted South Africa and Africa and the world. It’s my story, but it’s also a story that belongs to all South Africans.”
The series begins in the dying days of apartheid, with South Africa on the eve of its first democratic elections. In 1992, the national team returned to the pitch after a 16-year ban by world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, though the squad was effectively barred from international play throughout the apartheid era. It was an ignominious return to the global stage, with the team at the losing end of back-to-back drubbings by Zimbabwe (4-0) and Nigeria (4-1) that earned them the nickname the “4x4s.”
In the build-up to the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations, a pan-African championship held every two years, the pressure on the team began to mount. Following on the heels of South Africa’s dramatic victory at the 1995 rugby World Cup — a triumph that many credited with uniting a young, fractured nation still emerging from the shadow of apartheid — the underachieving soccer squad was faced with a near-insurmountable challenge to match that feat, which was memorably captured in the Morgan Freeman- and Matt Damon-starring “Invictus.”
Yet the team had other factors on its side. “Coming out of apartheid, when we were all segregated, the one great thing about soccer is it was the most integrated sport,” said Barker, whose trailblazing father coached Durban’s venerable AmaZulu F.C. soccer team during the apartheid era. “Rugby and cricket, those sporting cultures — and every sporting culture under apartheid — they were very segregated. They never mixed.
“When you look at the make-up of that team that won in ’96, it’s a mix of people from different cultures, different backgrounds, economically very different,” he continued. Part of the story of “Bafana the Boys” is how the director’s father could “take this team, these people that had just come out of apartheid, and make them gel together.”
Barker, who conducted a series of interviews with Clive as his health deteriorated in recent years, said the goal of unity — both as a nation and on the soccer pitch — is one that was especially important to his father.
“He was so passionate about changing the perceptions of South Africa and destroying apartheid and trying every day to break down those barriers,” said Barker. “I think he knew that sport would break down those barriers. And he knew that it was important for South Africa at that time to have such a well-represented team that showed our diversity is our strength.”
Screening this week in Johannesburg, Barker’s “Umbrella Men 2,” which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, is a follow-up to his 2022 Cape Town-set heist flick, which also bowed at the North American fest. Pic was released on Amazon Prime Video across Africa last year.
Set not long after the first film wraps, the sequel involves a plot to bust the gang out of prison after they wind up behind bars. Much of the action is filmed on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment under the apartheid regime, and — in the spirit of any good heist — brings back the cast and production team behind the first film.
“The atmosphere on the set of ‘The Umbrella Men’ was so great. We had talented actors, supportive producers and a fantastic crew and so we said, ‘Let’s keep this going, let’s write the sequel,’” said Barker. “We felt that the characters had so much more to explore, and that the community had so many more stories to tell.”
The Joburg Film Festival runs Feb. 27 – March 3.
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