Barry student forms film crew to go to World Cup (From Barry And District News)

Barry student forms film crew to go to World Cup

A BARRY student is taking the road to the World Cup finals this summer to make a documentary on the fans who follow their country through the tournament.

Kurt Williams, 23, studies documentary film making at Newport University and has enlisted the help of fellow students Nina Gerstenberger, 24, of Stuttgart, Germany, Ian Paterson, 23, from Brighton, and Nathan Mackintosh, 21, from Basingstoke, to make the 90-minute film.

The documentary, titled Our World is Round, will follow fans from around the world as they support their national team during this year's World Cup in Germany.

The four budding film makers will head out just before the start of the tournament to find willing fans to follow, although they already have some lined up.

Kurt said: "We have already got quite a few fans from different countries. We've got a refugee from the Ivory Coast living in Stuttgart and we've got a Welsh-German fan who is going out to support each team who plays against England."

FIFA, the sport's ruling body, has given the team access and press passes to film around the stadia in Germany, although no games will be featured in the final cut of the documentary.

"The film is going to be unique," added Kurt.

"We are not going to show one international footballer, we are going to concentrate on the fans of football.

"We are going to get 32 fans, one from each country and we follow the knock-out tournament through them, so if their team gets knocked out we'll stop filming them - until there is one fan left."

The crew are understandably excited, calling it a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity.

Nathan said: "It's going to be fantastic and there's going to be a fantastic atmosphere .

"The film is going to be colourful because the amount of characters we are going to follow either going to be similar or opposite and they're going to bounce off each other."

The team are hoping to get the film released soon after the World Cup ends and plan to take it to a variety of film festivals once editing has been completed.