The documentary Home Games (Домашні ігри) follows a young woman in 2016 while she struggles to take care of her 6 and 7 year old siblings while pursuing a path to professional football in the Ukraine. Football has been Alina Shilova’s only escape from the poverty of her daily life, and her dream is to play for the Womens National Team. But she is also her siblings’ only hope for stability.
In the Story
Alina Shilova is a short stocky midfielder with quick feet, good ball skills, and a hearty running game. She is very poor, and the film opens with Alina hand-sewing her cleats back together.
Her parents were jailed for theft when she was 4, and Alina may have been raised by her grandmother or in an orphanage. Her mother had 2 more children with another man named Roman. All of these people live in one apartment, except the mom and dad come and go on alcoholic binges. Mom and Roman don’t care enough to register their kids for school, so Alina takes on the responsibility, sells her belongings, and buys the kids school clothes.
At the same time, Alina tries to keep her spot on Атекс Kyiv FC (Atex), the Kyiv womens team founded by Coach Alla Gres Vasilyevna. The team is as impoverished as its players; they practice in muddy parks and look like a rec team. Coach Alla discovered Alina and urges her to take care of her family problems and stop skipping training if she wants to play for the NT. Alina manages to get into a NT summer camp and takes her siblings with her.
By the end of the film, Alina’s mother has died of organ failure, the kids’ father has largely abdicated all responsibility, and Alina has gotten legal aid to presumably secure the kids’ low-income benefits. We aren’t told what happened to Alina’s football career, and I couldn’t find any activity beyond this film.
About Ukraine
Director Alisa Kovalenko focuses on Alina’s story and doesn’t provide much context other than the impoverished conditions that Alina lives in. It’s therefore possible to forget about the Russian invasions and the state of football in Ukraine.
But Alina’s situation was not unique in 2016, and at this point in the war, it could reflect the majority of Ukrainians. Since the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and compounded by Putin’s second invasion on Feb-24-2022, poverty in Ukraine has essentially doubled. It was expected to be over 60% in 2023.
Football has been a conduit to lift people’s spirits. I will also be reviewing the 2022 docuseries Football Must Go On, but apparently womens football has managed to keep going during the war. Leagues are still operating and there is a website for womens football in Ukraine, with a youtube channel. Alina’s team may have folded by 2023.
About Alina Shilova
In researching, I discovered that Alina Shilova (Аліна Шилова) had played for the U-17 and U-19 WNTs back in 2011-2013 and had been called up to play in Scotland.
I also discovered that Coach Alla Gres Vasilyevna (Гресь Алла Василівна) was well-recognized in field hockey and apparently worked very hard to keep her sports club afloat for 20 years. Her major soccer success might have been with Alina on the team.
About the Film
Besides making this feature-length documentary, Writer-Director Alisa Kovalenko originally set out to make a short film. She won a grant from The Guardian to produce the short, but she also turned the footage into this longer film that is more ethnographic, showing the details of Alina’s environment and family.
My only quibble about the film is that it doesn’t cover the invasion at all and expressions of Ukrainian identity are quite limited. But, I read that the Director still lives in the Donetsk region, which would mean expressing anything even slightly anti-Russian could be held against you in the future.
You can watch The Guardian 18-minute short film here; it is titled Home Match and was released in Oct-2017.
In Conclusion
Watching Home Games as well as Football Must Go On is quite heartbreaking. Especially knowing that the way the returning Trump will end the war will be by withdrawing American support of Ukraine and giving Putin free rein to invade and consume wherever he wants. In a way, showing these films as entertainment helps us forget what is at stake, how populations are suffering, and what may loom ahead. But if these films instead inspire you to help fix the world’s problems, then you are a blessing.
7 Soccer Movie Mom Rating = 7
Resources:
- Released: 2018-06-09 (Sheffield Doc/Fest)
- Ukranian title is Домашні ігри
- In Ukrainian with English sub-titles
- 1 hour 26 mins
- I watched this on Kanopy
- IMDB
- Director: Alisa Kovalenko
- Stars: Alina Shilova (Аліна Шилова)
- Watch the Trailer
- Watch the 18 min short film Home Match sponsored by The Guardian
