Frame of the Goal is a column about representations of football in cinema. The films featured in this column are not football films per se, but might include the sport incidentally or tangentially, in a specific scene, storyline or shot.
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Between 1967 and 1973, the United Kingdom forcibly expelled residents of the Chagos Islands from their homeland in the Indian Ocean to accommodate a huge United States military base. The Chagossians were moved to Mauritius and the Seychelles – at the time British dependencies – and many now reside in England. The West Sussex town of Crawley is home to the UK’s largest community of Chagossians, one of whom is Sabrina Jean, the tireless activist and inadvertent football coach at the heart of Olivier Magis’ 2019 documentary Another Paradise.
At the time of production, the 50-year lease of Diego Garcia – the main island of Chagos – to the US was about to end. In response, Sabrina set about putting an ambitious plan into action: the Diego Garcians would return to their archipelago. Two thirds of Another Paradise chronicle Sabrina’s efforts – in the UK and on trips to the US – to make her community’s dream a reality. She protests outside the House of Lords, drums up support from American campaigners and lobbies the likes of Amnesty International for help, all to little avail as ministers drag their feet over a decision on the lease renewal. Seeking international media attention to pressure the government, Sabrina arranges for a Chagos national football team, made up entirely of Chagossian men from Crawley, to participate at the 2016 World Cup for stateless and diaspora groups. The middle third of Another Paradise follows the team’s ups and downs at the tournament in Abkhazia. It’s effectively a football film within a film.
A World Cup for stateless peoples and regions unaffiliated with FIFA has existed in some form since 1988 (it has been called the CONIFA World Football Cup since 2014). Chagos qualified for the 2016 competition alongside the likes of Northern Cyprus, Padania, Felvidék and diasporas of Armenia and Punjab. The film’s most moving sequence occurs before a ball is kicked. At the opening ceremony, Sabrina and her comrades proudly parade the Chagos flag adorned with the words “back to our paradise, unforgotten Chagos.” Then, prior to their first match, a tearful Sabrina hugs each player in the dressing room as the entire crowd claps along to a Chagossian anthem. These stirring moments of solidarity are made only more touching when juxtaposed with clips of gloomy MPs dehumanising the Chagossian plight in the House of Commons.
Sabrina’s warmth intensifies as the football begins. While the team’s male coach barks tactical instructions and stock rebukes from the dugout, Sabrina offers a softer approach, maternally consoling a defender who is sent off in the opening game against Abkhazia. It’s a sobering watch as the goals fly past the Chagos goalkeeper in an 8-0 defeat. When the team sleeps in the following morning, Sabrina changes tack and goes full mum, ripping off their duvets like they are her own sons about to be late for school. But even her anger is couched in familial love. When she gives the players a dressing down in a team meeting, she scolds with affection: “We’re a team, we have to stay united. We have to be a family.”
Somehow, things only get worse on the pitch as Chagos are thrashed again, this time by the Armenian Diaspora. The match action is shot from what is essentially Sabrina’s view on the sidelines. A shot of the giant scoreboard reveals the damage: 9-0 after 65 minutes (a quick Google search divulges the final score was 12-0). And as quickly as they arrived in Abkhazia, the Chagossians are eliminated from the World Cup. Sabrina hardly has time to mull over the team’s performance. She gives a series of interviews to journalists about her people’s true cause and in a flash we’re back in Crawley. Back home, everything is quieter and more dismaying. The bright, brassy soundtrack that underscored the football scenes is replaced by near silence as we are reminded of Sabrina’s day-to-day: she hangs the players’ kits on her washing line at home, helps her ailing father take a blood pressure reading and checks for updates on the US lease renewal while on a break at her cleaning job.
To a great extent, the mini football film in the middle of Another Paradise operates as a break from starker realities; a slice of levity – albeit painful in a way only football can be – bookended by legal battles, politics and grief for past lives. The government eventually decides “against the resettlement of the Chagossian people on the grounds of feasibility, defence and security interests, and the cost to the British taxpayer,” a line coldly trotted out by then-foreign secretary Alan Duncan in the House of Commons. Sabrina’s new plan for a group of Chagossians to secretly travel to the archipelago on a boat is discouraged by a lawyer, who suggests the US military will “shoot first and ask questions later.”
The film ends with Sabrina’s father in close-up, eyes closed, expressing his desire to die “surrounded by nature” on his “native soil” – “not in England, the land of the colonisers.” Sadly a return is no closer. In May this year, the UK agreed a deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and lease back the military base. A UN panel has called for a renegotiation, but the huge cost of a relocation remains a stumbling block. Meanwhile, the last two stateless World Cup tournaments were cancelled due to complications around logistics, security and the COVID-19 pandemic. Chagos did not qualify for the 2018 competition, which was held in England on behalf of the Barawa FA – a shame, as it would have been an opportunity for protest closer to the decision-makers in parliament. Some would like to separate football and politics completely; the truth is the sport provides fertile ground for activism. Another Paradise understands this, but crucially the film also mines football for something else: its potential to deliver respite from troubles.
Another Paradise is streaming on True Story.
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