Inspirational "Team Nepal"

The story of a passionate team of Nepali footballers representing a youth club from the district of Birjung. This team is given a unique opportunity not often granted to the still-growing community of Nepali football enthusiasts to travel to Sonpur, Bihar in India, to play football in a tournament taking place there. Team Nepal is the documentation of their experiences in Bihar, traveling, meeting and mixing with other footballers, living in a foreign country, and playing the game they love.

This documentary was the last of November film festival, organized by South Asian Film club, which screened 9 documentaries. I missed others. Anyways next time.

After the show, the director of "Team Nepal", Girish Giri (left), was with us for the questions we might have after the show. Besides he shared a little story behind this great documentary, which also received 'Mention de Honor' at the Milan International Ficts Film Festival in Italy in 2005.

Giri also used to play for that club 4/5 generations back. Later when he found out that the things hasn't changed much since his time, he decided to shoot the event.He did editing on his own at his spare time and took around 2 months to complete, while the event duration was 6 days, covered in 32 min of documentary.

Like mentioned in first paragraph, "Team Nepal" consists of local youths from Birgung, who are passionate about football and looks forward to being on the national team. One team member in the documentary mentioned about his rejections from the national team selection, without being given any reasons. He was complaining that many people think Kathmandu is Nepal, and stressed that our vision should be broadened to see that Nepal is much more than Kathmandu. But though they are not in the National Team, people in India would welcome them as "Team Nepal" and they felt like they are actually playing for Nepal rather than for small youth club, which really helped boost their energy. The documentary was also funny at some places. Overall it was a good and inspiring "Team Nepal".