New Delhi, 13 Oct:

The film ‘Red Army’, based on hockey, is being screened at the Mumbai Film Festival commencing tomorrow.
 
The Festival, which continues till 21 October, is divided into nine sections: International Competition for the First Feature Films of Directors, World Cinema, Indian Frame, Dimensions Mumbai, Retrospectives, Above the Cut, New Faces in Indian Cinema and The Real Reel.
 
Red Army is a feature documentary about the Soviet Union and the most successful dynasty in sports history, the Red Army hockey team. Told from the perspective of its captain, Slava Fetisov, the story portrays his transformation from national hero to political enemy.
 
From the USSR to Russia, the film examines how sport mirrors social and cultural movements. It parallels the rise and fall of the Red Army team with the Soviet Union.
 
Whether he was pitted against enemies in the political arena or on the ice, Fetisov's story provides a rare glimpse behind the Iron Curtain of the 1970s and '80s by mirroring the social and political forces at work in the world around him.
 
While helping pave the way for his nation to cross over into the next century, this one man demonstrated how sports could not only be an avenue for creative expression in a world determined to suppress it, but also be something so inextricably intertwined with a nation's cultural and political identity.
 
The film, which has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, features Mark Deakins and Vyacheslav Fetisov who are among the erstwhile’s most-decorated athletes.