Asif Kapadia has co-directed 12 Final Days with Joe Sabia, a highly-anticipated look at tennis legend Roger Federer’s retirement.
A great piece has popped up at Variety, charting the behind the scenes story of how acclaimed documentary maker Asif Kapadia became involved with the soon to release 12 Final Days. Kapadia is no stranger to making brilliant documentaries focused upon the careers and lives of sporting legends (see Senna and Diego Maradona) but as the piece explains, he came onto this project when Sabia was already deep into post-production.
The film releases next week on Amazon Prime Video here in the UK and given Federer’s enduring popularity as a tennis icon, we’d imagine that there’ll be no shortage of viewers waiting to see it. Given that Luca Guadagnino’s brilliant tennis drama, Challengers is now available to watch at home as well, might we humbly recommend what might just be the greatest tennis double bill of all time?
As for 12 Final Days, the Variety piece explains in some detail the process of getting the film made, including the decision to bring Kapadia onto the film rather late into the process. The filmmaker largely worked with archive footage to supplement Sabia’s existing cut and helped produce a film that places much of its focus on the very end of Federer’s glittering career.
It’s that focal point which clearly proved to be the draw for Kapadia, as he states in the piece that “it’s incredibly sad: athletes die twice. That’s what we’re talking about. We’re witnessing a death. They’re all crying. They all have a breakdown, but they’re gonna get on with their lives. [Federer] even says, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do now, what comes next?’ It’s really emotional. I think that’s what connects with me.”
We’re looking forward to this one and we won’t have to wait long to get it in front of our eyeballs. The film will drop just a week before WImbledon too, and we can’t imagine anything more fitting than an excellent documentary focused on one of the sport’s greatest players to get you in the mood for some summer tennis.
