In the summer of 2017, young ice hockey players from the small town Náchod in East Bohemia set off on a long distance trip to Morocco, to participate in what was surely the most entertaining training camp they had ever experienced.
The original mission was to play ice hockey game in the exchange programme, but they did not just go there to play ice hockey. Perhaps even more importantly, they went to Morocco to get in touch with the local people and get immersed in their way of life. Both on and off the ice, Rozálie Kohoutová and Tomáš Bojar’s camera focuses on a few teenagers and their exchanges, simultaneously funny and cruel, in clumsy English. A few months later, their visit was reciprocated by ice hockey players from the Moroccan town of Salé who went to the Czech Republic for the very same reason.
This exchange trip fostered a lively dialogue between two different cultures, spiced up by many little surprises and doses of liberating humour. The teenage egos blaze, the competition exacerbates tensions and the film remains faithful to its astute, firm stance: to observe, at teenage level, national pride, at times grazed with hockey stick blows and casual conversations in the bus.
Did they learn to recognize an offside position?
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