Playoff (film)

Playoff
פלייאוף
Directed by Eran Riklis
Produced by
  • Olivier Delbosc
  • Udo Happel
  • Marc Missonnier
  • Moshe Edri
  • Leon Edri
  • Michael Sharfstein
  • Marc Wächter
Written by
Starring
Cinematography Rainer Klausmann
Production
company
  • TLV Art Rabinovich Fund
  • Partner
Distributed by
Release dates
  • November 24, 2011 (2011-11-24) (Israel)
Running time
 107 minutes
Country
  • Israel
  • Germany
  • France
Language
  • German
  • English
  • Hebrew
Budget $25 million

Playoff (Hebrew: פלייאוף‎‎) is a 2011 biographical film, written and directed by Israeli director, Eran Riklis. The film is inspired by the life of Ralph Klein, Israel's most famous basketball coach.

Plot

Smadi Wolfman with Eran Riklis

The film tells the story of legendary Israeli basketball coach Max Stoller. He became a national hero, when he made Maccabi Tel Aviv into European Champions in the late Seventies, one of Israel's first great international sporting successes. But Max became a national traitor equally fast, when he then accepted the against-all-odds job of turning the totally hopeless West-German basketball team into European winners.

Max always maintains that Germany - where he was born before the war - means nothing to him, and that training their national team is just another job on his path to NBA glory. But things aren't as simple as he refuses to speak German to the young players. The only person he seems to be able to relate to is a Turkish immigrant woman Deniz, and her cheeky teenage daughter Sema. Max just about falls in love with Deniz - and does succeed in reinventing the Germans as European champions. When he discovers what happened to his own family in the 1940s - it is not what he had expected. And he will realize that one cannot run away forever from one's own past and demons.

Cast

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