In the small fishing village of Koh Panyee in Southern Thailand resides one of the most successful football youth teams. Produced as part of an advertising campaign, the Thai Military Bank introduce this dramatized documentary which looks at the roots of football in a village built on stilts with almost no space at all. Inspired after watching the 1986 World Cup on television, the local children build a floating wooden pitch with open sides and the occasional exposed nail and honed their skills on the wet wood with bare feet; however their first real challenge came when they went to the mainland for their first tournament.
This short film tells a story that I had not heard before and it was one that was quite pleasing to come across at the time of the 2014 World Cup and all its monetary excesses. The film is produced by the Thailand bank TMB and in some ways this is a good thing (the film gets made) but in others it is not since there are aspects of the production that are hurt by the need to fit into a branding campaign. The short is very well made and with a child's narration it recreates the scene of the old pitch and the tournament before showing us the modern situation. It is engaging and professionally made but it is delivery at too fast a pace with too little below the surface of the slickly told story. It is a sports drama at the end of the day but there is not too much to draw the viewer in and it really rattles through the story very quickly. I understand why – it has to get to the "Make the Difference" message to justify being made, but the cost of this seems to be that it could have been a better told story.
Perhaps there is a feature in here to be told in a Cool Runnings style with more time for the comedic element of the situation to be brought out and used to produce a funny sports underdog film (they always do well) but, although it is interesting, Panyee FC is too slick, too fast and too simple to really stick in the mind on the virtue of the film, even if the story itself had me following up on Google.