KICKOFF IN KURDISTAN - 
or HOW WE ALMOST BECAME WORLD CHAMPIONS

This is the funny and exciting story about a bunch of soccer players from a remote Swiss Mountain area known as "The Grisons" venturing to Kurdistan to become world champions at the Viva Worldcup 2012, an international soccer tournament for teams unaffiliated with FIFA. This documentary shows the fascinating journey undertaken by the "Grisons" from their sheltered homes to Northern Iraq, and follows the team throughout their stay in Kurdistan and as they compete at the Viva Worldcup. We were with the team when they cheered and when they shed bitter tears of disappointment, when they partied as if there were no tomorrow and when they feared for their lives in a country no "Grison" had ever set foot before. And even the normally very eloquent president of the FA Raetia Gian-Marco Schmid and internationally acclaimed rapper GIMMA (MTV Europe Music Award in 2011) were sometimes at a loss for words under the mercilessly hot Kurdistan sun. The voice-over belongs to actor Andrea Zogg, who starred in the Oscar-winning movie "Journey of Hope" from 1990.

We would like to show this movie wherever people are interested in a movie about soccer, or in a film about Kurdistan (Erbil, Sulaymaniyah). Our film premiered at the Filmfestival Schaffhausen, Switzerland, on 3 March 2014.