Hot Docs 2025: Ultras Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Football (or soccer) drives people through their emotions and passion. Celebrating a goal collectively or complaining about a foul alongside hundreds of strangers from within a particular stadium is how the sport brings fans together. Highly organized groups of fans are known as ultras. These groups travel around and attend away games to support their favorite teams and draw coordinated pictures in the stands to push the them. While it may be one of the world’s most popular subcultures, if not the most prominent, Ultras, the latest effort from Swedish director Ragnhild Ekner documents the ultras subculture on a worldwide level and how these groups support their favorite teams.

In his introduction, Ekner shares how her subjects have refused to have their faces recorded in order to protect their real identities. This would prove to be a crucial element to the film as the ultras movement is often mistaken for hooliganism, another radical subset of fans known for their more violent impulses. Here, she abdicates the talking head format to focus on the collective imagery of the fans in the stands. Structurally, the film blends voiceovers of fans describing their love for their teams. The director avoids the massive football clubs and their ultras, instead choosing to delve into the culture itself and how it is not linked directly to team success. Ekner shoots in Morocco, Indonesia, Argentina, Italy, Sweden, and Poland, providing different perspectives on a controversial subculture, especially for the stigma place on it by society.

In this sense, when Ekner rejects the talking head artifice, betting on the strength of her imagery. The film thrives in representing the catharsis of the communal celebration of a goal and how it freezes time for all of those involved. An Argentinian mother proclaims that after her son passed away, football team Nueva Chicago connected with him spiritually. Her pains disappear when she is singing in the stands. The film thrives capturing the coordinated and colorful movement in the crowd. Meanwhile, it explores the misconception about the violence of some ultras and how they harm a mostly peaceful manifestation of popular gathering. However, that debate is shallow and does not develop entirely the complexity of the themes.

Visually, Ultras impresses with its framing of a popular passion. In Indonesia, the filmmakers follow a highly coordinated display developed by the supporters of FC Sleman. They change colors, sing their lungs out, and push their players to the goal. It is the scene in which Ekner takes the most time to observe the fans and portray an utterly magical effort to demonstrate their love. It sums up their love of the game. Also, the Indonesia segment highlights the most personal connection with its subject matter through a collective of young female fans promoting female engagement in the game. They challenge societal rules for women and how they get treated as subhuman, but they want to take part in society. It is a massive demonstration of their passion and strength that the sport inspires those women to take action and follow their hearts.

On top of that, the film also utilizes other subcultures through its soundtrack. Drum & Bass and garage music, two UK subgenres from electronic music, promote a highly kinetic sound to vibrant images. Similarly, the film sounds and looks, as the football fans describe the sport in the 1990s, as a genuine expression of passion. However, laws and rules would ultimately diminish this aspect of the Ultras movement. Nowadays, they are homogeneous with coordinated kits and drums, and even the pyrotechnics are similar. Still, through Ultras, director Ragnhild Ekner writes a love letter to the fans who perhaps love their teams a bit too much. Despite its shallow discussion of some important themes, such as the hooliganism and violence, it nonetheless takes audience on a visual journey through the brightness of the stands.

Score: 70/100

*still courtesy of Hot Docs*

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Pedro Lima

Brazilian film writer. He is also a producer and executive producer for Zariah Filmes. Member of the International Film Society Critics Association (IFSCA), International Documentary Association (IDA), and Gotham and Media Film Institute.