I am a sports atheist, but I love a good story, and one of the greatest sports stories ever told is the rivalry between the Soviet Union’s Red Army hockey team versus the US. Even as a four-year old girl, I understood that the US beating them at the Winter Olympics was a big deal. If you agree, you should see Red Army, a documentary that primarily focuses on Slava Fetisov’s perspective.
Red Army is about sports as a tool for survival, art, propaganda, torture and freedom. What really makes Red Army outstanding is the conflicting emotions on Fetisov’s face: an unwavering allegiance for his home and contempt for lazy, inelegant Americans (he multitasks even while bing interviewed) while simultaneously hurt and betrayed at not being valued or treated as a human being by the home’s powers that be. I wonder what kind of coach he is now that he is the one in control.