“Heysel 85”, interview with director Teodora Ana Mihai

Presented in Berlinale Special Gala at the 76th Berlinale, “Heysel 85“ is the fourth feature film by Romanian-Belgian director Teodora Ana Mihai. On 29 May 1985, the European Cup Final between Juventus and Liverpool FC at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels ended in tragedy: hooligans went on the rampage before kick-off, dozens of people died, and amid the chaos a fateful decision was made to let the match go on. The film follows two characters caught in the middle of that catastrophe: Marie, daughter and press attaché of the mayor of Brussels, forced to step in for her father who is no longer capable of taking command; and Luca Rossi, an Italian journalist covering the match for television, desperately searching for his family while continuing to report.

An unusual suspect

Teodora Ana Mihai came to this project through her producer Hans Everaert, a long-time collaborator who approached her with a specific conviction: that if she were to make a film about Heysel, it would not be a film about football as a sport, but about football as a metaphor. “In many ways, I was an unusual suspect to take on this subject matter” Teodora Ana Mihai acknowledges, “and we both felt that was precisely why I should do it, it might go to places one wouldn’t necessarily expect.” The challenge and the opportunity, she adds carefully, though opportunity feels like the wrong word when dealing with such a tragedy.

Football as a metaphor

What compelled Teodora Ana Mihai was not the match itself but what it symbolises, what the Heysel tragedy reveals about human nature under extreme pressure. “It’s a story about distraction in times of crisis” she says, “about how institutions and individuals sometimes choose to look away rather than confront the moral weight of their decisions.” The mechanisms at play in 1985, political and personal responsibility, fear of escalation, the temptation to preserve appearances feel, in her words, painfully current. The film operates on multiple layers: football is the backdrop, the arena, but on the second and third layer it speaks about existential issues and human nature. “We are always trying to say something about our current condition” she reflects, “to tell stories that echo what we’re living today.”

History unfolding in real time

At the heart of “Heysel 85” is the question of what individuals do when history unfolds around them and how they struggle to remain on the right side of it. Marie and Luca are not decision-makers at the top of the chain of command, yet they are each pulled into the vortex of a crisis that demands choices none of them are prepared for. The politicians and police face the central dilemma: cancel the match, or let it go on? As fear takes hold that stopping the game could escalate the situation further, a questionable decision takes shape, one that continues to provoke debate forty years later. “The questions the tragedy raises feel extremely timely and relevant” says Teodora Ana Mihai, “within the socio-political and geopolitical landscape we are living in today.”

Plot