'Ange & The Boss - Puskas in Australia' — on screens in October
'Ange & The Boss - Puskas in Australia' — on screens in October
Our film is being screened as part of the Greek Film Festival (Sydney 17th Oct, Melbourne 20th Oct) and in Palermo at the Paladino d'Oro. Gooooooall!
Our Puskas film is finally getting screened! It’s called ‘Ange & The Boss – Puskas in Australia’, and after seven years of blood, sweat, and only a few literal tears, we got there!
For those who haven’t heard of Ferenc Puskas, he was a giant of football – in the words of his Wikipedia entry, ‘widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time and the sport's first international superstar’. In 85 internationals, he scored 84 goals. FIFA now honours the best goal in the world each year with the Puskas Award.
In the 1960s, Puskas dominated La Liga and topped the goalscoring four years out of five. He then became a manager and a football wanderer, shut out of Hungary after the 1956 uprising and Soviet crackdown. He coached in Greece, Panama, Spain, Canada, and Australia – and it’s the Australian part of the journey that is the focus of ‘Ange & The Boss - Puskas in Australia’.
It’s an amazing story. Ange Postecoglou, his captain at South Melbourne Hellas and now manager of Tottenham Hotspur, likened it to Cristiano Ronaldo turning up twenty years from now and coaching Central Coast. I think it’s actually even better than that -- both Puskas and Hellas have an old world charm that couldn't be matched in the modern day.
The Australian chapter starts with the Hungarian community bringing him out, their Puskás Öcsi, and making him welcome in Australia. We received unseen footage from Parkmore Soccer Club of Puskas playing in Keysborough, his big gut hanging over his baggy shorts, his dynamite left foot seemingly undiminished.
He later signed as coach of South Melbourne, one of the Greek teams in the old NSL (each of the teams had an ethnic affiliation). Our film examines what Hellas meant to Greeks, and why the club clicked with this global superstar who had coached Panathinaikos to a European Cup final in 1971. Maybe the most emotionally charged parts of the doco involve Ange Postecoglou, Peter Tsolakis and George Vasilopoulos remembering the migrant experience, and what the club meant to them and their families in the 60s and 70s. We’ve got lovely archive from that time. We’re hoping Greeks and Hungarians will come to our screenings in numbers and across generations, because this film is a salute to the courage of the migrant experience. I get a lump in the throat every time I hear Ange talk about his dad jumping the fence after the 1991 Grand Final, and their embrace that day.
It’s also a bloody funny film. I watched 'King Otto' and thought – our player interviewees are more engaging than their interviewees. Mike Petersen, Paul Trimboli, Ange, Gus Tsolakis, Con Boutsianis, Kimon Taliadoris – they are all so good at telling stories. There’s one about a pasta platter that actually drew me to this story so many years ago, and still makes me laugh. There’s another about Ange and Puskas at the side of the Tullamarine freeway with a flat tyre. Val Kopasz and Alex Varga carry the magical story of Puskas doing his clinics in Keysborough, and settling with his wife Elizabeth in a two bedroom weatherboard in Ashwood behind Val and Arpi's garden supply business.
This was not a man who was driven by ego.
Finally, there’s brilliant NSL football action aplenty, culminating in the 1991 grand final between South Melbourne Hellas and Melbourne Croatia. It’s a legendary game of football that finishes with the craziest of penalty shootouts, and it’s a marker in the life of many Melbourne Greeks. If you were there, you have to be make it to Melbourne's Astor Theatre on the 20th of October to relive the match, or if you’re a Sydneysider, the Palace Norton Street on the 17th October. We have Q & A afterwards with Paul Trimboli (both screenings), Miki P (Melb only) and Simon Hill (Sydney only).
Then, between 10-15 December, ‘Ange & The Boss’ will have its overseas debut at the Paladino d'Oro sports film festival in Palermo. My codirector Cameron Fink and I are very excited about that.
It's possible we’ll get a wider release for the film down the track. It’s also possible we won’t and that these screening at the Australian Greek Film Festival are your only chance to see ‘Ange & The Boss’. We've worked so hard on it these last seven years, and we really love it. Hope to see you there!
Screening dates:
Sydney: 17th October, The Palace Norton Street, 6.30pm, Q&A filmmakers, Paul Trimboli, Simon Hill
Melbourne: 20th October, The Astor, 4.30pm, Q&A filmmakers, Paul Trimboli, Mike Petersen
Palermo: 10-15th December, Paladino D’Oro (exact screening date to be finalised).
Some praise for the film:
“One of the greatest untold football stories ever. Genuinely astonishing, beautifully nostalgic, and bloody funny. A pearler of a film.’ – Santo Cilauro
‘A beautiful film about a beautiful time.’ – Paul Trimboli
‘The vignettes of archive footage are simply delightful’ – ‘The Times (UK)
The Times article was a beauty. Read it in full here.
