Starring:
Distributor: Madman Films
Runtime: 96 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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An engaging documentary for wine lovers, with a lot of vicarious tasting. But also a film showing the hardships of four refugees from Zimbabwe to South Africa and their achievement as top sommeliers.
There are two principal audiences for this engaging documentary. The first audience would be those who are wine-lovers. The film gives them the opportunity for some vicarious wine-tasting as it follows the careers of four sommeliers, and provides information about the Wine Tasting Olympics in Burgundy– competition preparation and training, the coaches, a tour of vineyards in France and Germany and then the competition itself.
The second audience, who might not be interested in wine at all, are those who are concerned about refugees around the world in the 21st-century, more particularly, refugees from Zimbabwe in the first decade of the 21st-century. Many were stranded at the borders with South Africa, eventually being smuggled into the country to make their lives there.
And, there is the audience who is interested in both themes.
The film focuses on four Zimbabwean men who leave their home country, taking their wives but leaving their children behind until better times. They experience the brutality of the border groups and are smuggled in by train, eventually finding their way to Cape Town.
Although there is minimal wine in Zimbabwe, the four have become expert wine-tasters and are employed as sommeliers in top restaurants. We meet them as a group and personally. And we see Joseph’s mother back in Zimbabwe with a newspaper article acclaiming him on her wall.
The men become the Zimbabwean Wine Tasting Olympics team at the 2017 competition in Burgundy. Time is spent on their working together, pooling their gifts at tasting and understanding the wine. They have a South African trainer who explains situations and his work to the audience. He is also the trainer of Team South Africa and wants the two teams to bond rather than be arch rivals. Money is raised around the world to get them to France.
In France, the team’s coach, Denis, was previously the winner of world competitions. He accompanies the men on their trip around France and Germany but clashes with the South African coach.
The film follows the intricacies of competition with the team merely hoping not to come last . . .
Their return home is to great acclaim, and we see briefly how successful their lives have become. And when the team returns in 2018, they improve their ranking by nine places.
Madman Films
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