AIFF OPENING NIGHT – An Interview with Esteban Arguello
Opening Night Interview with Esteban Arguello, director of Jiàoliàn [Coach] and Jury and AIFF JURY AWARD FOR “BEST FEATURE DOCUMENTARY of 2016.
This is the story of 27-year-old Norman de Silva, who overnight was given the head coaching job of the Chinese Basketball Association’s (CBA) Foshan Long Lions. Although basketball has been in China for over a hundred years, their professional league is still very young. In an effort to make the CBA games more exciting and to enhance the training and development of local players, the CBA allows each team to contract up to two American players and an American coach. For Norman, China is an opportunity at the job he’s always wanted, but as he delves deeper into the lives of his players he sees kids that have been put through exhausting and mundane drills for years to become model athletes. In order to win, Norman has to help his players fall in love with basketball again. Jiàoliàn [Coach] is a rare time-capsule of what it means to play basketball in China at a time when age-old Eastern practices are clashing with new Western methods.
