Artist in Person

Last summer, the South Korean soccer team advanced to the World Cup semifinals-the farthest ever for an Asian team-triggering a tsunami of support. But South Korea wasn't the first Korean team to find success on the World Cup stage, as this entertaining documentary reveals. In the summer of 1966, the North Korean squad arrived in England for World Cup VIII. Considered thousand-to-one buzzkills, the lightly regarded Koreans, averaging 5'5” in height, played tough and fast football and shocked the world in the greatest upset in World Cup history. What happened to the team afterwards has been a thirty-seven-year mystery, until now. The Game of Their Lives tells the story of these plucky 1966 darlings, and catches up with seven surviving members of the squad that defeated Italy. Four years of negotiations paid off as the Pyongyang government allowed the film crew unprecedented access to the players and public areas. An affectionate look at a forgotten moment in sports-and world-history, revealing soccer's ability to tear down barriers of race and politics.