Champions: A Lesson In Humanity

The cinema, beyond making us have a good time, can become a powerful weapon, capable of creating powerful messages, of denouncing, criticizing and, ultimately, vindicating. The thinker Marshall McLuhan declared: “the medium is the message”; and in this sense, the cinema is a great medium. Campeones (Javier Fesser, 2018) has become the great winner of the last Goya gala.

With a cheerful and innocent tone, Campeones launches a clear and forceful message,  intends to make visible some people who are frequently excluded from society. Three Goya Awards under his arm accompany his success at the box office: best original song, best film and best new actor for Jesús Vidal.

It is not easy to make a film that brings some light to intellectual disability without falling into melodrama or excessively sugary, and although Campeones is tremendously optimistic, he embraces differences with a smile, from respect and inclusion.

Bet on the worth of these people who, day after day, fight for their integration into an increasingly competitive and demanding society.

Apart from its positive message, the film also leaves room for criticism, which goes beyond the obvious. In a totally dehumanized world, what we need are smiles and a good dose of humanity.

Champions , an awareness campaign

Marco Montes is the second coach of a basketball team, he is used to high voltage competition. His personal life is not at its best and, professionally, it begins to falter. Montes loses his job and, after a series of altercations as a result of driving under the influence of alcohol, finds himself between a rock and a hard place.

You will have to choose between spending a period in prison or coaching a basketball team made up of people with intellectual disabilities. Obviously, the choice, albeit grudgingly, is clear. We soon meet the members of the “Los Amigos” team and the situation, for Marco, turns desperate.

The awareness is produced progressively, Marco is learning a little more about the personal situation of each of the players. They all fight, day by day, like any of us. Getting a job is something that we have completely normalized, we take it for granted although, every time, it is more complicated for everyone. However, the situation is notably worse when we talk about people with a disability.

The film shows, in turn, a certain denunciation. There are countless things that we take for granted, they are normal and we no longer question them. But the reality is different for each of the individuals that make up a society. Not even Marco himself could perform as a basketball player, since he does not have an essential characteristic for this sport: being tall.

Likewise, Campeones shows us the darker side of some companies that take advantage of subsidies for hiring people with disabilities, underestimating them, despising them and giving them a different and disparaging treatment.

Also, take the opportunity to remind us that our actions can add enormous value to the lives of others. Marco drives under the influence of alcohol and this is a fact that, in addition to claiming countless lives, can lead to other types of irreversible damage.

As we have anticipated, a film of this type can fall into clichés, grief and sentimentality. Campeones does not completely escape the clichés, but it goes around the melodrama bringing us closer to a much more human vision.

Humor and sport as links

Sport should be enjoyment, improvement and effort. Unfortunately, in some cases, this vision is very far from reality. And I no longer speak only of elite sports, but of our day to day. How much news about sports fights do we hear? How many children’s competitions are tainted by unhealthy competition? I do not mean to disqualify the whole sport, nor to say that we should not do our best. Competitiveness yes, but in the right measure.

It seems that we have lost respect, that in the fight to be the best, we do not mind stepping on anyone. And this is something that, as children, we did not know, but we have learned over time.

Children, like the protagonists of the film, play sports for fun. Of course, we all want to win, we all want our efforts to be recognized, but we should not crush our opponents or cry in defeat.

Sport should function as a link, capable of eliminating barriers and borders. A tool that allows us to enjoy, socialize and, why not, also improve ourselves.

You have to go out to win, yes, as in all the battles we face every day; but winning is not synonymous with destroying the adversary. That lesson is not going to be taught by Marco, that lesson is going to be learned from people who still retain their innocence, purity and who are capable of hugging their opponent whether they win or lose.

Humor, in turn, works perfectly in Champions . The comic note occurs in different situations, but at no point does the mockery appear. All the characters are capable of making us laugh, but not at them, but with them. Therein lies the difference.

Champions , lessons for everyone

You learn from everything and everyone. But the message of Champions is not limited only to its plot and its entity as a cinematographic product, but goes much further. On the one hand, the actors that make up the basketball team are people with no acting experience – except for Jesús Vidal – who also have some kind of disability.

Visibility is given from within, giving them the opportunity to star in a film in which they have more than demonstrated that they perfectly fit their characters and demands. With enthusiasm and work, they have gifted us with interpretations that transcend any social mold. We do not see that label that in many cases they carry, but we enjoy the film and its characters.

Inclusion is reflected in the film, but also behind the cameras. Fesser relied on people with intellectual disabilities to work on other non-screen sections. Likewise, they had the support of different organizations and this has been a strong push for them. By raising awareness and claiming great things can be achieved.

The Goya were soaked in that energy and that joy that Champions gives us , but, above all, they shone with the spectacular speech of Jesús Vidal. A speech of gratitude with which he gave a voice to all his colleagues and to all people who, like him, have a disability. Vidal suffers from a 90% visual disability, but this has not been an impediment for him to be able to obtain a degree in Hispanic Philology, pursue a master’s degree in Journalism and, of course, demonstrate his acting skills.

Without a doubt, it was a speech that we should all listen to, which drew smiles and tears of emotion in an environment that, at times, as in sport, is tainted by superficiality and excessive competitiveness. As Vidal points out: “inclusion, visibility and diversity”, a great lesson and three very necessary words.

Capturing all that innocence and naturalness,  Campeones manages to convey a completely humanizing message. Awareness-raising can take place in different ways, either through politics or through the media. In this case, the cinema proposes us to change our perspective, our way of seeing these people who, unfortunately, continue to be excluded and silenced.

Reality itself inspired the film; Thanks to a news item in the newspaper, the idea came up. Now, Champions , although it is not the first film in history to address inclusion issues, has opened or widened the way; it’s fun and a breath of fresh air.

Life lessons and much-needed visibility because we, like Marco, also have a lot to learn.