Alexander Nicolaou
Ballers Club - Documentary - Trailer
2008 headlines read "Knife crime epidemic", ten years on and in 2018 the statement is repeated, why?
Some stories you search for other find you, and in this case it was the latter. In 2018 I created a short promo film for a voluntary organisation that hones young peoples football skills and helps them enter the world of professional football, whilst also guiding them into the world of adulthood and keeping them off the streets of London in the process. I soon found out there was much more to this story, from young employment and lack of opportunities through years of austerity, systemic racism growing in a post Brexit Briton, to youths across the UK losing their lives to violence and knife crime.
This observational Documentary follows the journey of the Ballers Club players into adulthood and as a club chasing the league title. We see the loss through the eyes of bereft mothers, the struggle local government faces to do something, the people who have reformed themselves and turned their lives around and the solutions to knife crime. The documentary does not glamorise or stigmatise knife crime, but instead captures the reality of living in a city where violence is at your door step.
