To celebrate the Football World Cup 2010 in South Africa the ACF London presents this documentary film by Hüseyin Tabak.

The Homeless World Cup is an annual, international football tournament, uniting teams of people, among them the homeless, asylum seekers, former alcoholics and drug addicts. The teams take part in a once in a lifetime opportunity to represent their country and change their lives forever. None of them will earn money in this competition – it’s about much more than that: a chance to play themselves back into life.

Kick-Off is a remarkable documentary that follows the Austrian team as they prepare physically and mentally for the tournament in Melbourne Australia in 2008. The film tells the stories of these determined individuals as they regain feelings they lost a long time ago: respect, pride, self-confidence and a renewed zest for life.

To find out more about this project visit www.homelessworldcup.org

Hüseyin Tabak, born in 1981 in Germany, discovered his love for film making at the age of 13: with his father’s camera he filmed Street-Soccer-Tournaments. After gaining practical experience in more than 20 film and TV productions in Hamburg he enrolled in 2006 at the Department of Film and Television (Film Academy Vienna) of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna (http://www.mdw.ac.at/?pageid=144). Already his first short film, "Cheeese", about a Kurdish family during the Iraq War in 2003, produced in 2008 at the Film Acadamey Vienna, received international praise. More information on Hüseyin Tabak (in German only) at http://oe1.orf.at/artikel/231243.

Our special thanks for helping to organise this screening go to Aichholzer Filmproduktion Vienna.

Austria 2009, 94 minutes, German with English sub-titles.