Beyond the Screen - HNC Media (Clydebank) students

Review Page 26
United Passions
‘United Passions’ is quite possibly the worst film ever made. That is me being nice.
By Jacob Toland
Sepp Blatter: Former president of FIFA; who was incharge during the FIFA Corruption Case
‘United Passions’ is an
absolutely horrendous
film that borders on
sheer propaganda. It was
ninety-percent funded
by football’s governing
body, FIFA. It had a
total budget of $26.1
million dollars but only
took in $200,000 at the
box office. Why? FIFA,
in their wisdom, decided
to release it right in
the middle of the 2015
corruption scandal. The
fiasco resulted in the
former FIFA President
Sepp Blatter and former
UEFA President Michel
Platini being banned from
football for eight years.
The scandal erupted just
before the start of the
FIFA congress. Even the
FBI were involved in the
raid at a hotel in Zurich.
With all of this unprecedented
corruption, it
was a monumental PR
disaster to release such a
train wreck of a film. If
you read about the FIFA
corruption scandal and
then watch ‘United Passions’
(which I would not
recommend), you would
be asking yourself how a
young vibrant Sepp Blatter
could turn into one of
the most corrupt men in
world football. The script
completely misses out all
of the bribes that FIFA
official were accepting in
dodgy brown envelopes.
Instead, it shows us how
Sepp Blatter changed the
course of the beautiful
game by bringing in many
corporate sponsors to