BLACK DIAMONDS

Winner of the Audience Award at the Málaga Film Festival, this very well-documented social drama by director Miguel Alcantud exposes the darker side of the huge and cruel global business behind the sport known as soccer, especially concerning the search for talent, the ‘black diamonds’ referred to in the title, among young Africans. Two of them, identified as valuable potential players in Mali by a talent scout, flee their country and head to Spain to escape poverty, only to discover a reality that bears little resemblance to the ideal world they had dreamed of.

Just 15 years old, they left Africa and arrived in Europe led by a promise that they would become football stars. Amadou and Moussa are spotted in Mali by a football scout, separated from their families and brought to Madrid to become stars. The embark on a journey through Spain, Portugal and Northern Europe which will show them first-hand the world of shadows behind the beautiful game; a business which does not see in them two young kids, but two “Black Diamonds