It is the story of two brothers who dreamed of becoming great footballers one day. But also that of the parents who had to leave everything behind and enter the desert to cross it in search of a better future. Of a mother who travelled from Ghana to Nigeria, then to Niger, Libya, Algeria and Morocco until crossing the Melilla barrier, all this while she was pregnant with her first child. They lived there for three months until they were sent as refugees to Bilbao. “I don’t want to advise anyone to follow this path. No, because it’s horrible. No food, no water, nothing. I remember a woman who started to get sick during the journey and who told me that when she died, I would have to take care of her children who remained in Ghana. I remember how empty her eyes became. “I called her, I told her to wait, but she died,” remembers Maria, the mother of Iñaki and Nico Williams, in the documentary “Los Williams” broadcast this Monday in Bilbao in the presence of everyone and previously at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
“My mother, for Nico and me, is everything. Fortunately or unfortunately, we grew up with that, because my father had to emigrate. Thanks to the fact that my mother has a lot of courage and lived through misery with me inside, she gave us everything. I always say that everything we do for my parents is little because they left everything behind so that we could be where we are. We will always be very grateful. For us, our mother is the boss, we have a lot of respect for her and we would give our lives for her. I think that the figure of a mother is very important for everyone. Here we have seen that my mother is a fighter and that perhaps thousands of people in the world have her story. With this film, we wanted people to empathize, to feel that when people come from abroad, they do it to earn a living, to have a better future. “My mother would like to come back, as she said in the film, but it couldn’t happen and she stayed and took the courage to stay here,” Iñaki acknowledged.
The film, in addition to its football highlights such as the victory of the Copa del Rey, the departure of Gabarra through the Bilbao estuary 40 years ago or the participation of the two brothers in the World Cup in Qatar, each with a different style of team, Nico with Spain and Iñaki with Ghana, captures the closest side of the family, the usual friends, the park where they played football as children or the Ghanaian city where their grandparents lived.
“I wanted to maintain that essence, that way of approaching the protagonists. I have to admit that it was not easy. Access to the world of football is complicated. I took my first shot in Qatar. The objective was to build bridges between Euskal Herria and Africa, between Bilbao and Ghana and they are. Another objective of this film was to create references. I think that Iñaki and Nico are references for everyone. I wanted to create a legend around the two of them,” acknowledged the author and director of the documentary, Raúl de la Fuente. Filming began during the World Cup in Qatar and lasted 16 weeks on three continents: Europe, Africa and Asia. In Europe, the settings were Bilbao, Pamplona, Madrid, Seville and Berlin, while in Africa, Ghana and Angola and in Asia, Qatar.
However, as De la Fuente himself confessed, at first the film was supposed to be shot in one year, but it was considered that the year recorded “in sporting terms was not enough”. And they waited another year, until Athletic won the victory and it could be filmed on the big screen. “We are making this film for ourselves, but also for the rest of the world. The goal is for the story to travel around the world and for the Williams to be known worldwide”, he acknowledges about the documentary, produced by Kanaki Films and En Cero Coma, a Fremantle label and which has the support of the Basque government, the Government of Navarre and the participation of ETB, as well as with the collaborations of Petronor and BBK.
Racism is another of the issues addressed by the film, when the two footballers talk about the insults they have suffered during matches from the stands or, when they make mistakes while playing, then on their social networks to the point of having to close their account. “In class, we were always the only black people and everyone treated us very well. I have known hatred and racism in football,” says Iñaki in the film, to which his mother responds that she likes being black because that is how God created her. “If you are black, you are black. It does not matter. That is how God created us and I like it,” he says.
The film shows how Iñaki is the older brother who had to take care of Nico for years, he did everything he could to raise his family and now Nico is the one who takes over to go even further than his brother. His mother, as explained in the documentary, remembers that they could not pay for electricity or gas at home until the company cut them off. “Iñaki prepared his brother, took him to school. He helped me a lot. They cut off my electricity and water and I had no money to pay for them. I cried a lot and told Iñaki that we had no money. Sitting next to me, he told me: ‘Mom, don’t cry, I’m going to be a footballer. I’m going to be in the First Division. The suffering will pass'”, his son told her. And that was it.
“I remember watching the film with my brother and we both started crying. Seeing how your mother crosses the desert makes you think and reflect on your life, on what would have been like if my mother and father had not crossed the desert, we would be in the situation of the children who appear in the film,” said Nico. . referring to two brothers from a village in Ghana who are shown at the beginning and end of the film. Every day they go fishing together, but the older one wants to leave to become a footballer, while the younger one tells him about his fears and asks him not to leave. The life that the Williams brothers could have had if their parents had not managed to emigrate to Europe. The one that so many children have who dream of escaping poverty through football.
