“Tatami” gets everyone into judo – Libération

Off the ground, the film co-directed by Guy Nattiv and Zar Amir Ebrahimi about a face-off between Iranian and Israeli athletes turns into a caricature.

Judo is the martial art where you have to learn to fall. Then to get up again without difficulty. A beautiful art then but not very cinematic, unlike boxing, and the film in question here will not contradict us. But knowing how to fall and get up testifies to a more general and moral quality of the “sports film”: the harder the fall, the victory is ours, and vice versa, knowing how to lose and knowing how to endure, a sporting triumph stipulates a triumph over oneself even more so when the story aims to mix a political message with the performance, as is the case in Tatami. But to know how to be edifying, one must know how to be didactic, therefore dialectical, and never ideological – especially to then sign a film with the thick glory of America “which saves” and protects.

Bold bet

In this overexposed black and white sports film, Raging Bull, The bet was nevertheless audacious to dedicate this enduring story entirely to Iranian women, during a judo championship in Tbilisi where the essential issue will be to measure up or not (in which case, to forfeit under a pretext) to an opponent representing Israel… Co-directed – the film’s marketing has hammered it home enough – by an Israeli filmmaker (Guy Nattiv) and the Iranian actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi (awarded the