Movie about rural soccer players focuses on teenage girls and seeks to inspire audiences to follow dreams, Xu Fan reports.

In late 2018, Fei Yu, a filmmaker from Sichuan province, ventured into the remote villages of Yunnan province in search of inspiration for his directorial debut feature.

During the monthslong journey, one idea captivated him as he watched children playing soccer in a village called Shitoucheng ("stone city"), which is located around 110 kilometers north of Lijiang.

The hospitable children offered the then 24-year-old green walnuts, and he was mesmerized by the village's breathtaking mountainside location. Its 100-odd homes, bordered on three sides by sheer cliffs that create a natural fortress, stand densely packed on terraces carved into the mountain face, overlooking a rushing torrent below. Due to the slope and slight drop between houses, it did not seem to be difficult to leap from one rooftop to another.

As a gentle breeze swept through the valley, Fei listened to the distant sounds of horses neighing and children laughing and a vivid image began to form in his mind — that of a group of children playing soccer atop the village roofs.

That image inspired the opening scene of Football on the Roof, and after taking home the jury special award in the films market project section of the 2023 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, the film was released across the Chinese mainland on April 20.

The film tells the journey of a teenage girl, Aime, who's passionate about soccer. She harbors the hope that by advancing to the finals in a provincial competition, her mother, who has left their rural hometown to work in a big city, might see her on television.

Facing many challenges, including making uniforms from discarded cloth sacks, the protagonist convinces her elder sister and her classmates to start a soccer team and persuades a former soccer-star-turned-fruit-vendor to coach them. Her determination pays off as she is eventually selected to join the provincial team and participate in a Sino-Japanese match.

Fei tells China Daily that he has been fascinated with soccer since childhood, and the memory was revived when he saw grandparents accompanying their grandchildren to soccer games in Yunnan.

During his search for inspiration, he passed Bingzhongluo, a village nestled in the northern end of the Nujiang River Canyon, where he met a 10-year-old girl with her younger siblings and their yellow-furred puppy.

The young girl enthusiastically invited the director to her home, showed him around, and used a long wooden stick to pick fresh lemons off a tree as a treat.

"When I was leaving, she asked, 'can you please send me some photos?' I initially thought she wanted the photos I had taken, so I said, 'no problem.' However, she shook her head and clarified her request. 'I've never left the mountains. The farthest I have ever been to is the opposite bank of the river. I hope you can send me some photos of the outside world'," Fei says.

The director was deeply moved when he realized that the girl, who had been left in the care of a grandfather who's constantly busy with rural chores, longed to feel more connected to her parents working in a distant city.

She became the prototype for his female protagonist in the movie. Despite auditioning child actors in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, Fei found they lacked the wildness in the eyes of country kids.

Traveling to many areas, from the cities of Lijiang and Kaiyuan, to the Chuxiong Yi autonomous prefecture, the crew auditioned around 10,000 students in 203 schools before selecting Tang Liangfeng and Tan Xinyu, then both 12, to play the protagonist and her elder sister.

Over the following months, Fei found himself in a role resembling that of a head teacher, using candies to encourage the children, who had only had two months' training before the shoot, to follow orders, and redesigning the schedule to ensure they wouldn't work too late into the night.

While most of the children were cast for their sports abilities, Shi Junxian, who plays the coach, secured the role in an unconventional manner. Shi, who juggles jobs from bath center attendant to barber, unexpectedly received a call from a property agent during his audition.

"I was in a rush to sell my apartment, and I couldn't ignore the call. Despite needing to answer, I couldn't hide my expression, as I was worried that the director would not be happy if I answered the call. Surprisingly, Fei felt that my haste to finish the conversation was precisely the attitude the role required," Shi says.

Now about to turn 16, Liangfeng remembers being a fifth-grade student in a primary school soccer team when she first met the director.

"I was asked if my parents watched my competitions. With my father working in another city and my mother busy caring for my younger sister, they rarely came to watch me play. This made me tear up during the conversation, and it resonated with the director, helping me secure the role," Liangfeng says.

Unlike Liangfeng, co-star Xinyu's passion for sports developed during filming despite a lack of prior experience. On the recommendation of her uncle, a friend of Fei's, she followed the strict, two-month training schedule, waking up at 6 am for exercises and soccer training. Despite several years having passed since the shoot, Xinyu's dedication to sports is unwavering, and she has been selected to play as a center back for the Yunnan provincial team, which competed in the 3rd China Youth Football League earlier this year.

"The shoot has ended, but the young girl's love for soccer has not. She has found a new direction to strive for in life. This is very meaningful," says Fei, adding that he hopes the audience will also find strength and courage to pursue their dreams through the inspirational sports film.