Eryk Rocha's SUNDAY BALL to Hit NYC Theaters, 12/11

Cinema Slate is proud to announce the New York theatrical opening of Eryk Rocha's SUNDAY BALL, a documentary essay on a 14-team, annual soccer championship among favela teams in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Set in the Sampaio neighborhood (close to the Maracanã Stadium, where the 2014 World Cup final was held), SUNDAY BALL brings audiences up-close to a final match between two rival teams: Geração (from the Matriz favela) and Juventude (from the Sampaio favela).

Scheduled to open on December 11, 2015, at New York's Cinema Village, the film will expand to other markets early next year and also premiere on Fandor.com on the same date.

With a keen eye for both form and content, director Eryk Rocha takes his camera to unexpected places inside a soccer match, and unveils a rich universe of human emotions, precise movements and meaningful rituals.

By rejecting the talking-heads approach and the much-too-common tactical view of the game, Rocha enters into the world of soccer from a sensorial and yet, socially grounded perspective. Here, the players' experiences take center stage, even informing a sound design that mixes noises from the match with music from Puccini, Wagner, Heitor Villa-Lobos, along with an original score composed by Jorge Amorim. As such, SUNDAY BALL is the very antithesis of a straightforward sports documentary.

As a great number of open fields previously used for soccer practice have been bought by real estate investors, it becomes clear that Mr. Rocha's cinema is also an expression of an endangered Brazilian form of bonding and sociality -- giving the film an extra layer of significance.

But above all, Eryk Rocha's SUNDAY BALL is a poetic and thrilling cinematic experience that will enrich anyone's understanding of what makes soccer one of the most beloved sports in the world.