I can promise you one thing about Giulio Bertelli’s directorial debut Agon, it’s unlike any sports movie you’ve ever seen. There are no roaring crowds, triumphant trophy lifts, inspirational training montages, or comeback stories. Bertelli isn’t interested in exploring what it’s like to win, but rather what it feels like to sacrifice for a competition so deeply rooted in the violence of the past. The film follows three athletes in the midst of their brutal preparation for a fictional Olympic Games. Weaving back and forth between a judo fighter, a fencer, and a shooter, the film presents a unique set of challenges, from injury recovery to scandal.
Bertelli’s approach to sports-focused storytelling isn’t the only unique part of the film. He develops a wholly original visual language, expressed through an array of different media. It blends traditional, narrative style with a documentary-like realism, even mixing in screen recordings of websites, lo-fi video, an endoscopic camera, and video game animation. It never feels gratuitous, with each approach telling the audience something important about the mentality or plight of the featured athlete. It also allows Bertelli, a former athlete himself, to create a shockingly accurate depiction of sport. A procedural doping test scene, conversations with doctors, coaches, and fellow competitors, and interviews with the press all lend an authenticity to the film that few other sports films have been able to achieve. These scenes are mixed with industrial interludes, showing real factories manufacturing bullets for sport or welding the masks for fencers, drawing a connection between the athlete and the machine-like mindset required to succeed. And it’s the central performance by an actual Olympic gold medalist, judo fighter Alice Bellandi, that drives that realism home.
“… athletes in the midst of brutal preparation for a fictional Olympic Games …”
While Yle Vianello and Sofija Zobina both deliver strong performances as the fencer and shooter, it’s the non-professional actor Bellandi who you can’t look away from. Not only is her story the most compelling of the three, but her portrayal is the most raw, honest, and visceral. As she deals with a nagging knee problem that keeps getting in the way of her clear talent, her expressions of pain and anger leap off the screen, clearly bringing so much of her own experience to the role.
The film is almost horror-like in its execution. The unsettling sound design veers between completely silent and overwhelming, even pulling in anxiety-inducing noises like loud beeps or a vibrating phone going unanswered. There’s a steady undercurrent of brutality, both in overt ways through the sports themselves, but also in more subtle ways, like watching a fish be gutted. The competition scenes are sterile, focusing less on the action of the sport and more on the guttural sounds, the sweat, and the agonizing expressions. And right after the title card, Bellandi’s character undergoes a knee surgery. Bertelli filmed a real procedure, showing close-ups of incisions, blood dripping, and flesh torn in gruesome detail. It’s clear that you’re meant to be uncomfortable from the start.
Bertelli successfully builds tension throughout each athlete’s journey, but there is no payoff or final moment of catharsis. It’s an intentional choice that leaves you wondering why someone would subject themselves to the agony required to compete. And while the film may leave you with more questions than answers, Bertelli’s ambitious, thought-provoking, and unnerving portrait of three athletes will haunt you long after the end credits roll.
"…a thought-provoking and unnerving portrait of three athletes..."
