Soccer is the world’s game, a sport beloved by billions. But what if soccer is actually irretrievably broken? And what if the only person who knows how to fix it is a down-at-heel bureaucrat in a back-office in Romania?

Thirty years ago, an aspiring Romanian football player named Laurentiu Ginghină had his career cut short by a literally leg-snapping tackle. But rather than slip placidly into the grips of fandom, Ginghină has spent the intervening time on a rather more profound quest: to work out exactly what’s wrong with soccer and how you might tinker with the rules to finally solve the Beautiful Game.

Infinite Football is a frequently hilarious and strangely heart-warming rumination on soccer, life and the unexpected links between them from star of the Romanian new wave Corneliu Porumboiu (The Treasure, MIFF 2015; The Second Game, MIFF 2013). From eight-sided pitches to ultra-restrictive zoning and an impassable halfway line, Ginghină's vision is quixotic and unworkable yet, as Porumboiu discovers, fired by something altogether more human: the unquenchable hope for something better.

"Wonderful, drolly humane … less about the sport itself than the dreams that do not get followed, yet somehow still sustain us." – Variety