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Director Pascale Lamche’s got some help from Peter Mukurube (that’s him putting Sepp Blatter on the spot in the video), Anas Aremeyaw Anas and ‘Basile’ for her new documentary Black Diamond: Fool’s Gold. From the press release:

It’s an old story: in the past, it was known as the slave trade, now it’s simply a business ranging from amateur operators to an organized network. The film sketches the portrait of an anarchic and international network of speculators and traffickers of young African boys, under the aegis of the global football cult. From the hovels of Accra and Abidjan to the gleaming temples of sport financed by petrodollars, it takes us on the trail of Ananse the Spider, an ancestral folklore figure, who tricks, cheats and manipulates his peers. Entire families are ready to sacrifice their only possessions to it. While on the human market, if the diamond is lacking, the gold of madmen will do the job.

And this is a (translated) snippet from an interview with the director:

For this film, you have chosen to work with African journalists only, why?

There are three journalists in the film: a South African (Peter), an Ivorian (Basile) and a Ghanian (Anas). In South Africa, Peter asks FIFA president Sepp Blatter the key question of the film. He reminds Blatter that he once called the transfer of young African players a ‘new kind of slavery’ and asks: “Can you tell us what you mean by that?” Here you have an African in the country that is about to host the first World Cup on the continent – the Biggest Spectacle in the World (after the Olympics) – posing a question that clearly embarrasses the president of the almighty governing authority of football. We have to wait until the end of the film for Sepp Blatter to rediscover his mettle and answer the question.

In Côte d’Ivoire, the journalist is presented in animated form. Why?

Because right now no culture of press freedom exists in this country. Basil is an alias. It is a composite character, embodying an emergency doctor present at a stadium catastrophe and a journalist. They both insisted on remaining anonymous for fear of reprisals. In Ghana, Anas Aremeyaw received the prestigious accolade from Obama himself for being a “courageous journalist who dares to speak the truth.” In the film, it is Anas who is doing the ‘investigation’. I find that much more interesting. He comes to the conclusion that football is a perfect channel for human trafficking. (…) Anas turns his attention to an organization funded by Arab potentates that ‘looks for talent’ among 700 000 players aged 13 throughout 15 countries in the developing world. Anas wonders why – if the stated objective is to give a handful of boys a grant every year – they avoid countries like Brazil and Argentina, which have a highly organized system to exploit their own football talents and have asked Sepp Blatter to intervene so as to stop the poaching of their players by foreign predators. Anas follows the trail of some “lost boys” of the system and discovers what he calls an “enormous machinery” of illegal double scouting of talents through which boys are being moved around the world, sometimes for as long as 15 years, in the hope to generate future profits.

Anybody seen it yet?

–Tom Devriendt