Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno

Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno

Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait

10 February–31 March 200710 Feb–31 Mar 2007

The finest film at Cannes.The Observer

Glorious in its simplicity . . . Magnificently edited, and accompanied by a majestic score from Scottish rock heroes Mogwai, this is not only the greatest football movie ever made, but one of the finest studies of man in the workplace—an ode to the loneliness of the athlete, the poise, and resilience of the human body.Edinburgh Film Festival

Suddenly, you start to notice things you never had. Looking at Zizou, you become mesmerised by his balance, his animal watchfulness and his truly compelling looks: thin face; high cheekbones; closely shaved head with widow’s peak and bald patch; dark, calculating eyes. Above all, you register the strange tension between his apparent unflappability—he’s cooler than Bjorn Borg—and the simmering aggression just visible below the surface.—Sebastian Smee, The Australian

Turner-Prize-winning Scottish artist Douglas Gordon (Twenty-Four Hour Psycho) teamed up with French artist Philippe Parreno to create a feature-film portrait of one of the greatest-ever soccer players, French captain Zinedine Zidane. They used seventeen synchronised cameras—35mm and high definition—under the supervision of acclaimed cinematographer Darius Khondji. Each focuses solely on Zidane over the course of a single match between his team Real Madrid and Villareal. We see the legend in real time, in action and in repose. We follow him around the pitch, sometimes at the centre of action, more often waiting, watching. In voice-over, he broods over what he can and cannot remember from his matches. A joint project with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne. Zidane is distributed by Madman.