‘The emotion you get from the game is insane’: the Roy Keane bust-up film leading a new type of football movie

Saipan, about Keane’s infamous World Cup row with manager Mick McCarthy, has become a hit film in its native Ireland – as it opens in the UK screenwriter Paul Frasier explains how he aimed to avoid the mistakes of the past The best bit of football action in Saipan happens on a tennis court. The forthcoming movie about the schism between Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane that led to the latter departing the 2002 World Cup before it started does not attempt to recreate any of the action from the tournament. In fact, it largely takes place in a decrepit hotel. But we do get one exception: Keane, played by Éanna Hardwicke, practising alone in the grounds. At the back of a court, the sullen, spartan athlete stands as a ball is fired up and over the net towards him. He tracks it with his eyes, opens up his right foot, takes the ball on his instep and kills it dead. And with that, his sporting bona fides are confirmed. Saipan is a movie about masculinity, about men and their egos. It’s also about...

The Wire review – locals deal with razor-sharp border fence in migrant study

Documentary sheds light on responses to a fence designed to keep migrants of the EU Schengen area, a dizzyingly complex issue

Endless newsreel and column inches have been devoted to Europe’s migrant crisis over the past decade, and we are no nearer to getting to grips with the problem. This documentary by Croatian director Tiha Gudac opens up a fresh perspective by focusing principally on the effects on destination or transit countries: namely a beautifully sylvan stretch of the Croat-Slovenian border demarcated by the Kupa River and, now, horrible lengths of coiled razor wire laid down by the EU to prevent migrants from breaching the Schengen area.

The border fence sullies farmland and forests, complicates river tourism and separates Croatian and Slovenian communities who have ties going back centuries. The Balkan region is one with particular sensitivity to artificial segregation, and the local people tentatively fight back: early on, we see Croats and Slovenians joining up for a cross-border fun run. For those with long memories, this grim palisade, and the inhumane rejection of non-Europeans it implies, chimes with wartime fascism. But not everyone sees it that way: one father, mother and daughter spend their family time crawling under the wire to scope out points on the frontier where interlopers might be hiding.

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