by Andreas Ungerboeck

“Football on the Roof” is the debut feature film of Chinese director Feiyu, who hails from Sichuan Province and whose only film credit so far has been for writing the screenplay of the animated film “Shadow King” in 2019. His football project was launched with great anticipation and won several awards while still in development. Production began in 2020, but ran into difficulties several times due to the Covid-19 pandemic and because of financial problems. With the help of outstanding Fifth Generation director Huang Jianxin, who served as executive producer, the film finally got finished and hit theaters in 2024. It was a well received – so much so that in November it won the prestigious Golden Rooster Award (the Chinese equivalent of the Oscars) for Best Children’s film. A little later, at its first foreign festival appearance at the Children’s Film Festival in Vienna, Feiyu (he prefers to...