Company: Assofootball ASD
Country: ITALIA
Section: SPORT & SOCIETY – SPORT VALUES
Discipline: American Football
Year: 2016
Director: Tony Federico
Editing: Marco Morona
Photo: Stefano Bini
Soundtrack: 65 days of statics
Voice Off: Josefa Idem
Producer: Assofootball
CoProducer: IFL magazine TV
Time: 16 min
Synopsis
Kana e Saikou, class ‘98 from Gambia, arrived in Italy at the beginning of last September and, like thousands of other migrants, on a rubber dinghy. After a few days, they are moved to the reception centre in Fiumicino: this is where their new life begins with the support of volunteers and an organization that encourages them to integrate. The boys start going to school and then sport comes into their life. A relatively unknown sport in Italy comes to their aid, a “different” sport, just as Kana and Saikou are seen as “different”: American football. The boys start training with the Under 19 team that has a lion as symbol (like the one of Gambia). Less than two months since their arrival in Italy, Kana and Saikou make their debut in the Italian American Football Championship and lead their team to victory. For Kana and Saikou this is the first step on the road to freedom. Thanks to American football, they are taking control of their lives, they feel as if they are part of a family again, and they have made friends with children of the same age, whose skin may be a different color but whose eyes burn with the same passion. Wearing a helmet and shoulders pads with an emblematic lion emblazoned on their kit, they have restored the dignity that the boys once thought was lost forever.