The Referee

“A beautifully photographed short about a Ukrainian migrant called Nikolai who officiates at Sunday League football matches on London’s Hackney Marshes. Across that green expanse he runs and, for ninety minutes, he reigns. The rain beats down. Furious Turkish players yell at him. In the changing room, talking to fellow officials, he rues how costly it is to travel home and about the corruption that he might find there. He radiates authority, but isolation too. The film is over all too quickly, but it lingers in the imagination, reminiscent in its mood and milieu of Tony Richardson The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runnerand of Wim Wenders’s The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty Kick” — The Daily Telegraph.