SOCCER

FIFA Film: An Epic Fantasy

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Tim Roth plays Sepp Blatter in "United Passions." Prodigy Public Relations 
First came an international roundup of several of its top officials on federal corruption charges, including a hotel sweep down the street from its headquarters. Close behind came the pageant of its autocratic president’s re-election on a platform of: Eh, just a few bad apples.
What other drama could possibly await FIFA, the governing body of international soccer? Well, there is this movie: a star-dappled epic about FIFA, underwritten by FIFA and portraying FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter, as a resolute champion of ethics.
Its American premiere is on Friday, in the fresh wake of advance publicity conjured by last week’s dramatic indictments. That’s the kind of buzz you just can’t buy.
The film is called “United Passions,” but it is not, as the title might suggest, a lusty adventure in the way-too-friendly skies: a lonely flight attendant, a misunderstood pilot. ... No. This is about the succession of men in suits who nurtured the Fédération Internationale de Football Association from its idealistic creation a century ago to its current state of monstrosity.
The film claims from the start to be a work of “dramatic fiction,” gleaned from actual events. And true to its word, the movie avoids most of the factual inconveniences that might reinforce the widespread impression of FIFA as a corrupt rogue state, operating in contradiction to the noble ideals of the sport it purports to defend.
The movie’s director, Frédéric Auburtin, said in a telephone interview on Sunday that he did his best to provide as much subtext as circumstances would allow. A soccer fan from Marseilles, he knew that cries of FIFA corruption have resounded for years like so many vuvuzelas. But he also knew that FIFA was covering most of the cost, which came in around $30 million.
“I didn’t have the freedom to do a Michael Moore movie at all,” he said. “If I started the movie with flashlights and sirens coming to Zurich, like what happened last Wednesday — I knew if we would write any line like this, everyone would say: ‘What are you doing, man? Come on.’ ”
Mr. Auburtin said he would have preferred to delve deeper into the FIFA darkness. “But I accept the job,” he said. “I know FIFA is producing the film. As we say in France, don’t be more royalist than the king: Don’t be the king if you are not the king.”
Speaking of kings, Mr. Blatter, who is 79 and looks it, is portrayed in the film by the actor Tim Roth, who is 54 and doesn’t. After visiting the set and meeting Mr. Roth, Mr. Blatter allowed, “In this case the casting was well done.”
The film follows other FIFA presidents, including Jules Rimet, who is played by Gérard Depardieu, right. Prodigy Public Relations 
What remains is a sports movie without sports: a sports management movie, actually, in which most of the “action” takes place not on the pitch but in a boardroom, on a private jet — at a desk!
Blatter, sitting in an upright position, opens the envelope. What dexterity. It’s Blatter again, walking into a meeting, left foot first, then the right, knotting his necktie as he goes. A cool customer, this Blatter. Now sipping his drink, now negotiating with Horst Dassler of Adidas, back and forth and ...
GOOOOOL!!!
Mr. Auburtin’s involvement in the project began in the fall of 2012 with a telephone call from his good friend Gérard Depardieu, the French actor. Explaining that he had just returned from a meeting in Zurich with Mr. Blatter and a first-time movie producer, the actor asked whether Mr. Auburtin wanted to direct a film about FIFA.
As Mr. Auburtin understood it, old plans for a movie about FIFA were being resurrected in advance of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil (and, perhaps, the FIFA executive election in 2015). The pressure was on, and Mr. Auburtin was known as an intelligent soccer fan who could also turn around a movie project quickly.
“I totally accept, and am very responsible, and I have no regrets,” he said. “But I did not wake up in the morning and say, ‘Let’s do a movie about FIFA.’ ”
Sam Neill in the role of FIFA President João Havelange in "United Passions."Prodigy Public Relations 
Mr. Auburtin and his co-writer, the novelist Jean-Paul Delfino, scrambled for a few months to develop a script that both covered a century of FIFA and balanced their art with the wishes of their FIFA overseers. “You know the FIFA,” he said. “You cannot move a finger if they do not know the whole story.”
What they came up with is a passing of the FIFA baton by three central characters: Jules Rimet, FIFA’s president from 1921 to 1954; João Havelange, its president from 1974 to 1998; and Mr. Blatter.
The movie opens with a few Europeans envisioning an international soccer association that would foster good will among nations and elevate the level of play. The villains are the British, comically resistant to any intrusion in the game they invented.
One stiff-upper-lip twit asks, “What do foreigners understand of our beautiful game?” Another says: “Negroes? Playing football? Why not women while we’re at it? That would be quite amusing, eh?”
(The movie, by the way, has not been well received in England.)
The film seeks drama in the building of a stadium in Uruguay before the first World Cup; in the creation of the World Cup trophy; in the ups and downs of executives during war and depression. Whenever Mr. Rimet, played by Mr. Depardieu, becomes discouraged, his daughter, played by Jemima West, raises his spirits with lines that echo another movie, about a woman called Scarlett, a plantation called Tara. ...
Sepp Blatter of FIFA, left, with Gérard Depardieu and the director Frédéric Auburtin at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Loic Venance/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images 
“Tomorrow’s another day, Papa,” she says. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
The narrative moves on to Mr. Havelange, who attracted developing countries into the FIFA fold and recognized the potential of commercial partnerships. As portrayed by Sam Neill, Mr. Havelange is a Machiavellian figure of the first order, brusque, cunning and ambitious — though he actually receives gentle treatment, with no spelling out of his implication in a multimillion-dollar bribery scandal.
Finally, there is Mr. Blatter, the St. Thomas More of soccer administration, saving the game from financial ruin, expanding the role of women, fighting corruption from within.
“From now on, we will be exemplary in all respects,” Mr. Blatter announces to FIFA officials after his election in 1998. “The slightest breach of ethics will be severely punished.”
As the film says at the start: “dramatic fiction.”
A kind of anticipatory self-censorship was at play, Mr. Auburtin said. “Every time we are showing something about Blatter himself, it’s very, very difficult because the guy is the boss,” he said. “The guy is co-producing more than half the film, nearly 80 percent.”
The movie's cover.
Still, Mr. Auburtin said, he and Mr. Delfino injected “a lot of subtext” that hinted at the corruption: an envelope in a fruit basket; a briefcase; a scene, entirely made up, of Mr. Havelange and Mr. Blatter alone on a ferry, speaking in FIFA code about how to win election.
And Mr. Roth told The Sunday Times of London last year that after noticing little mention in the script of corruption, “I tried to slide in a sense of it, as much as I could get in there.”
In the director’s eyes, the film lays out soccer — before and after money. “The sport became something else when the money arrived,” Mr. Auburtin said.
Some people at FIFA “were not very happy with the film,” he said, “even if it looks like an official film.” He added that Mr. Blatter was moved by seeing 35 years of his life distilled in less than an hour but “had a lot of questions” after seeing it a second time.
“United Passions” — which, again, is not about love in the wild blue yonder — made its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, and both Mr. Blatter and Mr. Auburtin walked the red carpet.
FIFA recommended the film in a blurb of a letter to its members. “Open, self-critical, and highly enjoyable,” wrote Jérôme Valcke, its secretary general, who is now suspected of being involved in a $10 million transferthat figures in a bribery case.
After Cannes, the movie appeared in a few countries, including Russia and Azerbaijan, but never in France, to its French director’s puzzlement and dismay. “I don’t know if this comes from FIFA or the producers,” he said. “It’s a shame. It’s not such crap.”
No matter. Mr. Auburtin has moved on. He was speaking from the west coast of Ireland, where he was researching a film of his own creation, one that has nothing at all to do with this morass called FIFA.
A version of this article appears in print on June 2, 2015, on page B12 of the New York edition with the headline: FIFA Film: An Epic Fantasy. Order Reprints|  Today's Paper|Subscribe