In Football We Trust dir. by Tony Vainuku and Erika Cohn (review)

In Football We Trust is a documentary feature film that follows the lives of four Tongan student athletes: Harvey Langi from Bingham High School, Fihi Kaufusi from Highland High School, and brothers Leva and Vita Bloomfield from Hunter High School. Directed by first-time documentary filmmakers Tony Vainuku and Erika Cohn, In Football We Trust was an official selection in the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and is set against the backdrop of the class, race, and religious context of Salt Lake City, Utah, the epicenter of both the “Polynesian Pipeline to the nfl [the National Football League]” and also Polynesian immigration to the United States of America via the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The film leads with the stunning statistic that while Tongans and Samoans in the United States number only 240,000, they are twenty-eight times more likely than any other ethnic group to play in the nfl.

With snappy editing and smooth transitions by editors Ericka Concha, William Haugse (Oscar-nominated editor of Hoop Dreams [1996]), and Ken Schneider, the film rolls like the swells of the ocean itself. The first swell introduces the young men in situ: in high school bleachers hanging out, in classrooms practicing the Māori haka, on the field at Friday night football games. We are immediately entranced as the film introduces us to major influences in their lives: coaches, teammates, parents, siblings, friends, and girlfriends. The film begins to weave in clips with professional Polynesian athletes, who, like “ancestors,” illuminate the journey for these “nfl hopefuls” and provide a chorus-like commentary on family pressures, cultural background, and the odds of making it. These professional athletes include Vai Sikahema (the first Tongan to play in the nfl), Haloti Ngata and Star Lotulelei (both also from Utah), and Troy Polamalu. Their cautionary voices balance the optimism and high expectations of these young athletes while confirming that the statistic has absolute veracity—although the four young players are focused only on playing at the college level, their families have high hopes that the athletes will lift them out of poverty.

The next “swell” adds another complication: the theme of generational trauma. Leva and Vita’s storyline brings Utah’s minority cultures to the fore as they deal with a family legacy of violent youth fraternities, or gangs. Their father and uncles founded a youth gang in the 1990s, and through their story the film is able to explore the parallels of violence and sports to fraternity and masculinity. Like the generation before them, the Bloomfield brothers (who constitute a third generation of Tongan immigration) become subject to the systemic policing and juridical processes that contributed to the majority of the older males in their bloodline being dead, in prison, deported, or otherwise subject to State custody. Leva finds himself incarcerated for his senior year and misses out playing football altogether, while Vita completes probation, and we witness the struggle of their second-generation parents to cope with the ongoing fallout of a family history of street and State violence.

The statistical peril of incarceration is juxtaposed with a series of scenes with recruiters from top schools like Stanford and the University of Southern California who hotly pursue Harvey, who out of all the young men holds the highest grade-point average. Yet just as we think he is the one who will score, he is caught allegedly trespassing and smelling of cannabis, and this throws light onto the undeniable undertow of youth and class struggle they face. Further misplaced courage both on and off the playing field is shown through Fihi fearlessly playing in spite of a painful knee injury, which eventually leaves him recuperating in a wheelchair. As these different waves crest, we wonder whether any of them will make...