D you have to do that first. Everyone is talking about a film that no one has actually watched. Sure, we’re talking about “Melania”, the Amazon product about the wife of US dictator Donald Trump. Warnings are issued. It is said that this is not a documentary that is clearly advertised on the usual billboards in German cities. Be it an image film, a PR product or pure propaganda for a life whose meaning lies above all in choosing the right dress for the upcoming dinner.
This type of non-documentary, which goes under the label of documentation, is available in abundance in the offerings of streaming services or the media libraries of public broadcasters. This genre is particularly widespread among the numerous so-called sports documentaries. Most of these obsequious adulation films have not revealed any new insights. They served solely to exaggerate the subject or team portrayed.
A particularly cruel example of this is the film with the particularly cruel title “Schw31ns7eiger: Memories – From Beginning to Legend”, in which a man in football retirement talks about his life, who is completely at peace with himself. It really can’t be much more boring.
The only detail worth mentioning is Til Schweiger’s vain appearance in the 113-minute-long film, on which Germany’s favorite actor had actually already done enough damage as a producer.
PR for FC Bayern
The small Amazon documentary series about the German record champions in men’s football entitled “FC Bayern – Behind the Legend” was similarly pointless. It promises a “close look into the cabin”. Melania is getting dressed for dinner, the FC Bayern players are getting dressed for a Champions League game. Add a few archive images and you have a documentary with images that you have never seen before.
At least we now know what Robbie Williams thinks about Toni Kroos
It was all too obvious in 2021, when the Bayern advertising film was released, that something like that can’t really be any good. Anyone who walked through the pedestrian zone in the city center in Munich and passed the ugly FC Bayern department store couldn’t miss the huge advertising poster for the series that was attached to it. Maybe we should only watch sports documentaries where the people portrayed are not present at the premiere. One would be spared some submissive cinematic hagiography.
What Robbie Williams says
Then you wouldn’t have seen “Kroos”, the fake documentary about Germany’s most internationally successful footballer of all time. The one from the Film and Media Foundation NRWof the Bavarian Film-Television Fund and the German Film Fund with tax money promises deep insights into the mind of one of the most successful footballers in the world. It’s an empty promise. But according to the film, you know what pop star Robbie Williams thinks about Toni Kroos: only the best, of course.
It’s not much different with this one Netflix series about England’s hero footballer David Beckham. Here, too, you can only see the picture that the person portrayed draws of himself. This sometimes has depth when Beckham talks about the psychological pressure he sometimes suffered from.
First and foremost, the series seems to be about how good Beckham has always looked and how good he still looks. This could be similar with “Melania”. Maybe someone has seen the film and could confirm this.