When Mogwai played with Zidane

The movie Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (directed by Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon) has been showcased as an out-of-competition "Official Selection" at Cannes Film Festival. It can be seen now in France since May 24th, just prior to the beginning of the World Cup in Germany.

I didn’t saw the movie yet, maybe I won’t ever – or, who knows, probably after Zidane will retire, that means in few weeks – but, yesterday, I just watch on French TV the Making Of. Behind the beautiful pictures what attracted me was the sound. Good surprise, this is Mogwai who are providing the soundtrack.

Here is what the directors said on the film's sound work during the Cannes press conference:

Philippe Parreno: "We had no preconceived ideas, but we did know that we wanted to do very important work on the sound. We contacted a large number of sound engineers and chose in the end Tom Johnson, who is an extraordinary mixer. As for the music, we asked quite a lot of questions... We wanted to work with the group Mogwai, whom Douglas knew. We asked them for music which was able to show at what point Zidane is concentrated. They constructed rich, complex music, which met all our needs."

Douglas Gordon: "It was a long journey to arrive at the final sound as Philippe wanted something highly sonorised, while I fought to make rather a silent film. But as you've seen, the film is full of sound... But to be frank, there are things about which Mogwai spoke that we didn't really understand. They spoke of "sampling" audience attendance. We decided to trust them entirely."

Before the original score of Zidane will be available, no official date for the moment, a trailer from the film can be seen here: Zidane/ba.html