Black Eagles

Black Eagles
Schwarze Adler
Germany, 2021, 102 min.
Director: Torsten Körner
Documentary

Interviews with: Erwin Kostedde, Rigobert Gruber, Jimmy Hartwig, Steffi Jones, Gerald Asamoah, Patrick Owomoyela, Cacau (Claudemir Jerônimo Barreto), Jordan Torunarigha, Jean-Manuel Mbom, Shary Reeves, Anthony Baffoe, Otto Addo, Guy Acolatse and Beverly Ranger

When the German national football team lines up, the national anthem plays and the cameras study the faces before kick-off, it goes without saying that the players today have very different biographies. They are united by their pride in playing for Germany and competing against the best in the world. Their heraldic animal is the black eagle they wear on their jerseys. The eagle, which today suggests unity, also had an exclusionary message for a long time, because the German football hero was white thought of, dreamed of and revered.

Black Eagles lets Black players of the German national football team tell their personal stories. What road did they take before they got to where we cheer for them? What hurdles did they have to overcome? What prejudices and hostility did they face - and what was it like in the past, what is it like today? Accompanied by rarely shown archive pictures, which are sometimes as unexpected as they are disturbing, director Torsten Körner lets different generations of players have their say in his film. From Erwin Kostedde, who in 1974 was the first black player to make his debut in the national team, to Jimmy Hartwig and Steffi Jones, from Gerald Asamoah to Patrick Owomoyela and Cacau to Jean-Manuel Mbom: their stories not only tell of what it means to be the target of racist hostility in front of thousands of people in the stadium and millions watching on TV. They also shed light on how spectators, the media and German society deal with the issue of racism - and how slowly, seen from today's perspective, something has changed about this way of dealing in recent decades. - www.german-documentaries.de