Unbalanced logo

Documentary Review: 'Dunk or Die'

You think you love the slam dunk? Meet the French Algerian man who perfected it.

By Sean PatrickPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
Like

Documentaries are a window into a world you may not have known existed. The best documentaries are ones that take you to new places in the world, in existence, in consciousness. Documentaries expand reality, they teach, they inform and they entertain. The new French, black & white, basketball documentary Dunk or Die may seem like a documentary about a basketball player in France, emulating the heroes of the NBA, but that’s just the surface.

Director Nicolas De Verieu has the specific task of chronicling the life of Kadour Ziane, a superstar around the world for his spectacular mastery of the slam dunk. In the process of capturing Ziane, De Verieu throws a light on the nature of obsession. What drives the obsessive personality? Trauma? Riches? Fame? For Kadour Ziane, obsession means breaking physical, mental and emotional barriers built in a youth filled with the struggles of race and class.

As a young Algerian in France, Kadour Ziane and his family scraped by. Kadour’s father worked 12 hour days in a factory pouring metal into frames for a relative pittance compared to the grinding routine of his everyday work life. At home, Kadour struggled with his relationship to his distant mother, leaning on an older sister until that sister was forced to leave when it came time for an arranged marriage to call her back to Algeria.

For a time, Kadour lingered on the edges of criminality and his struggles hardened him into a volatile young man capable of fiery anger. With the aid of a younger, more stable brother, Kadour narrowly avoided a life of crime. Then Kadour found basketball. The court outside the apartment where Kadour grew up became a second home. Kadour played day and night, lighting trash cans on fire at night so he could continue to dunk.

Dunking was an especially important part of Kadour’s teenage life. He wasn’t learning the fundamentals, or shooting a thousand free throws a day. No, Kadour spent day after day after day jumping higher and higher until he had mastered the dunk. Kadour became a local sensation and when he found that there was a basketball team entirely dedicated to dunking, he had to become a part of it.

Slam Nation was a team of slam dunk professionals assembled by Bouna N’Diaye and Jeremy Medjana, a pair of NBA Agents who specialized in finding top European players. With slam nation, they envisioned a traveling halftime show with spectacular dunking acrobatics. They got that and more as the Slam Nation traveling show grew into an international sensation that played around the world.

Kadour Ziane was one of the stars of the show alongside Abdoulaye Bamba, a fellow dunker with a completely different demeanor from Kadour. When Kadour joined he was a loner, only out to make himself the star. As time went on however, the heartache and hard-heartedness of Kadour began to fall away and we are on that journey with him, a journey made possible by his unlikely friendship with the laid back and unaffected Bamba.

Through archive videos and photos we can actually see the ways in which Kadour changed over a period of just over a decade. We can see the anger in his eyes as a young dunker and throughout Dunk or Die, that anger slips away, Kadour’s smile becomes a regular presence over time and though he remains obsessed with dunking, that obsession slowly morphs from an expression of anger and frustration to a form of healing art.

Director Nicolas De Verieu worked for Slam Nation as a videographer during Kadour’s time and because of that he had years worth of footage from on the courts around the world to behind the scenes where we see so much growth and struggle for Kadour as he works to balance his desire for the perfect dunk with not working so hard that he does physical harm to himself. Injuries are a common thing for athletes but those are often accidents, for Kadour injuries are a price to be paid to be the best at what he does. Kadour risked physical harm in his pursuit of perfection and not the result of a missed step.

The final act of Dunk or Die is then about Kadour coming to terms with the obsession that has driven him his entire life. As his body ages, dunking becomes more of a challenge. Without the growth and maturity Kadour learned over time, the idea of declining even slightly with age might have killed Kadour. Thankfully, his journey is one of slowly coming to an understanding of life, time, physicality and emotion and that journey is lovingly captured in beautiful black and white images.

Dunk or Die is a terrific documentary with a fascinating subject and spectacular imagery. The dunks are the kind that make you want to jump out of your seat while the insightful conversation with Kadour, his family and his colleagues carry a beautifully human undercurrent behind the spectacular athleticism. Dunk or Die will arrive for Streaming rental around the world on February 22nd, 2022.

basketball
Like

About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.