Spain’s World Cup Kissing Scandal Was a ‘Symptom of a Broken System,’ Netflix Documentary Director Says as Fallout Continues: ‘This Is Certainly Not a Finished Story’
Netflix’s documentary “It’s All Over: The Kiss That Changed Spanish Football” hit the platform on Nov. 1 and has changed the conversation around women’s soccer in Spain in the weeks since.
In the film, key figures from the women’s Spanish national team are brought together for the first time to revisit the turbulent years leading up to the 2023 World Cup, including a leaked letter from 15 players condemning the Federation’s treatment of the squad, the incredible success they had at the tournament, the fallout forced upon them by the very public inappropriate actions of one man and the Federation’s inadequate response to the scandal.
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While the players were receiving their winners’ medals after the World Cup final, Spanish Soccer Federation (RFEF) boss Luis Rubiales shocked everyone by grabbing Jenni Hermoso, one of the team’s standout players, and kissing her on the lips. His inappropriate and possibly criminal actions – Rubiales will stand trial in February for the unsolicited kiss – were met with outrage in Spain and abroad and served to unearth a long history of corruption, abuse and mismanagement in the RFEF.
Unwilling to let others control the narrative about the months leading up to and immediately following the World Cup, the national team players began speaking out, using the social media tag #SeAcabo, which translates to “It’s All Over” in English. The hashtag caught on, and people from all walks of life around the world began sharing their own stories of workplace harassment.
Eventually, and only after a great deal of extremely public drama, Rubiales and several others, including then-manager Jorge Vilda, were fired from the Federation.
This week, the organization is again at the center of a scandal after the current women’s team manager, Montse Tomé, dropped Hermoso and fellow former captain Irene Paredes — both of whom feature heavily in the Netflix documentary — from the squad, citing “team spirit” as her reason for doing so. Many in the Spanish public and media are now saying that the players were dropped because of their public criticisms of the RFEF and their involvement in the documentary.
The film’s director, Joanna Pardos, recently caught up with Variety to discuss the origins of the project, its impact since being released and why “the end of the documentary is not the end of the story.”
Can you talk about how this project came together and what your relationship is with the players and this story?
I’d previously done a documentary about [Spanish footballer] Alexia Putellas. During the production of that film, the letter from the 15 happened, so I experienced it firsthand. But at that time, it wasn’t my place in a documentary about Alexia to talk about the bad manners, the level of contempt, the leaks and the manipulation from the Federation. It could have harmed the player’s career, and those are the kinds of things most people wait to talk about until after they retire. That all changed when Rubiales did that grotesque thing by kissing Jennifer after the final. When I talked to Alexia about it, she said [it] was no longer time to wait to talk about the other issues inside the Federation. This became a moment of vindication for the women who had been forced into silence for so many years. Everyone in the world was watching, and they’d never be stronger than they were at that moment.
You mentioned the letter from the 15. How important was it to include the years leading up to the World Cup in this film?
I think it’s impossible to understand that kiss if you don’t understand the circumstances behind it. The kiss was just a symptom of a broken system. Rubiales and Vilda thought that when the team won the World Cup, they won something, too, and that they were right or justified in their actions leading up to the World Cup. What Rubiales did afterward allowed us to go back to those other issues and reexamine them. There are so many things we didn’t know back then that are more easily explained by what happened later. It wasn’t just a kiss; it was the final blow in the war between Rubiales and the players.
And what happened after you talked to Alexia and got the green light from Netflix? This story continued to evolve and is still evolving today, so did you have to make any major changes during production?
In a practical sense, everything that happened with Rubiales after the World Cup helped me give Netflix even more of a reason to say “yes” to this film. The longer he held on, the more platforms became interested in my project. I always knew that the story behind this film was a powerful one, but it was also clear to me that it was a very cinematic story. It was a story that should be told as a film. I’m not a soccer fan myself, but this is a story about friendship. It’s about women who had a very clear objective to go up against a system that tried to divide them but how, in the end, they were able to unite against a common enemy. It’s a real Hollywood story, a David and Goliath tale.
That’s probably why the story resonated not only in Spain but around the world with actors, sports stars and people from all other walks of life embracing the #SeAcabo movement.
In the end, the injustice these women experienced is an injustice that many experience every day in other jobs, but these women became national heroes. So now, they are a reference to help empower others to fight for the same thing. That’s what makes this movie special. On the festival circuit and in awards ceremonies, there is sometimes a stigma against sports films. But just like there are good and bad comedies or romantic dramas, there are good and bad sports documentaries. This is a sports documentary, but it’s also about people who fight for social justice, which can reach far beyond an audience of just soccer fans.
Have you stayed in touch with the players and kept up with the news since finishing the film? And do you think this is something you might return to in the future, depending on how things develop?
The end of the documentary is not the end of the story. And as a filmmaker, I get hooked on everything I do, especially when I see there are so many problems left to be solved. So, I’m still very attentive to the players’ situation and what is happening in the Federation. There is still, I think, a story to be told about Rubiales and how his way of exercising power ended up being responsible for all these consequences. There are parts of the story that remain to be told. Whether something is produced to tell that story depends on the interest of the platforms and of the viewers. One of our objectives for the end of the documentary was to make it clear there is still a lot of work left to be done. We wanted this to be an empowering story, but at the same time, we wanted to make it known that there is still a long road ahead for women players, and it will be a difficult one. This is certainly not a finished story.
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