BORJA R. CATELA Madrid
Madrid
Updated Monday, February 5, 2024-21:33
LOC The dark story of Maradona and his relationship with a minor in Cuba
Maradona Profile: 84 million, eight children from six different women, serious addictions and a devilish character
Diego Armando Maradona
died in November 2020, but his figure is immortal. Every day that
Napoli
plays a match in his stadium, the fans remember him in a fiefdom that is now named after him. However, the documentary that
HBO Max
premieres on February 6,
Dalma Maradona: the daughter of god
, focuses its gaze on another, much more human facet of the soccer idol, and does so through the eyes of his eldest daughter, who chats with friends of the Argentine star to get to know a little more about the
earthier
Maradona .
Directed by
Lorena Muñoz
, the documentary shows the most transcendental moments of the footballer's life and career through unpublished images, revelations, details and unknown stories, which give rise to numerous emotional moments in which
Dalma
will not be able to suppress her tears. "I don't want it to be seen as a sad documentary because I appear crying, they are tears of joy, of emotion, of having been able to share life with him and that people have such beautiful testimonies of my father," acknowledges the actress.
What both the director and
Dalma
were clear about from the beginning was that what they were interested in was not going on a football tour: "We wanted to travel through the places my dad passed through, starting from
Fiorito
, which is the neighborhood where he was born. , he grew up, where the soccer field is where he started playing soccer and where he always said it was the place where he had been happiest," explains the star's daughter. "My uncle
Lalo
(who played two seasons for Granada), for example, tells how they were playing there for hours and hours until they ran out of power on the field. I think those memories of my godfather that appear in the documentary are very nice" , says.
His insistence on showing Maradona
's humanity
is not trivial: "I felt that all the documentaries that had been made about my father were very similar or repetitive in terms of his football career. I saw myself able to contribute my perspective, which could be different from everything that had been done before. As my story with him can only be told by me... The title of the documentary is a total irony, I do not feel that I am the daughter of any god, on the contrary, what I have tried to do is Bring him down to earth as much as possible to explain that for me he was always just my dad," he says.
But not only
Dalma
appears in the documentary , so do people who marked
Diego
's life such as
Guillermo Coppola
,
Sergio Goycochea
,
Carlos Tévez
,
Jorge Burruchaga
,
Fernando Signorini
and some of his Napoli teammates. Also a lot of unpublished material that
Claudia Villafañe ,
Dalma
's mother and
Maradona
's wife
, recorded: "My mother never thought that those images would see the light of day in this way, you can see that they are home recordings, but very beautiful, he loved them." "It looks very beautiful. We had to convince her because she was very jealous of that material, she didn't want them to be seen, but we wanted to share them," says the Argentine.
What places have you visited to record the documentary? We went to La Bombonera, the Boca Juniors field, to remember my dad's best moments there, but we also went to Naples, where you can breathe love for him, and that is very beautiful. I was able to talk to many people and, surprisingly, none of them talked about Maradona as a footballer, but as a person, about how his life changed, the job opportunity he gave them, how he defended them from this thing or that. Meeting anecdotes and people with whom I had not spoken before and who talked about the most human Diego Maradona was very exciting. What was it like to enter a stadium that has your last name, the Diego Armando Maradona, where Naples plays? They let them in to record, and we did everything right, we sent all the
emails
, we asked for all the permissions, but well, it couldn't be done. And that is also reflected in the documentary, because I would have loved to enter the stadium that has my last name, but we filmed nearby. Of course, since I set foot in Naples I felt something incredible, the love for my dad from all over the world. One day they recognized me when I was in a store doing some shopping alone, when I hadn't been to Italy for years. What memories do you have of Maradona as a footballer and as a father? When my father returned to Boca Juniors (in 1995) my mother thought of giving him a surprise. My sister Giannina and I got into a giant box and when he came out onto the field, she opened up to welcome him. At the end of the game we waited for him outside the locker room and we saw him leaving very angry. We asked him what was wrong and he told us how we had thought of giving him that surprise, that he wasn't expecting it and that he couldn't concentrate throughout the game thinking about whether we had gotten to the box safely, how we were... That day we didn't give him any more surprises before the games (laughs). I also remember that, as a teenager, I reproached him for not being at the birthday parties because he had games or training sessions, but years later, reviewing the videos of the parties, I could see that he was at all of them, but that I used that excuse as a reproach when I I got angry with him, I imagined things that hadn't happened to get his attention. He was a very present dad, very loving and very friendly. We knew that if there was a problem, we preferred to talk about it with him because my mother was much more demanding. I remember a lot of humor and very nice moments. You are an actress: What has your career been like? I started when I was eight years old working on a program called
Cebollitas
. My parents didn't want me to work when I was eight years old because I had to go to school, period. But anyway, since it was something that I really liked, they gave me permission to do the casting and, from that moment on, I haven't stopped working. I went to university and, on vacation, I worked as an actress. I have done film, theater, television and radio. Currently I have received several proposals to do theater after having taken a work break with the birth of my second daughter. Would you like to have a project in a Spanish series or film? I would love to. I think the documentary will open many doors for me internationally, although I don't act in it, it's me, but, obviously, it is a very big showcase and the truth is that I would love to act both in Spain and in Italy. The thing is that I am a big fan, for example, of Pedro Almodóvar and I follow some Spanish series. Entering the football field: What do you think of the debate between whether your father was better than Messi or vice versa? It makes me very angry that we have to choose one of the two, the comparison is absurd. It seems to me that they are very different people, with very different personalities. My dad was more jovial and open, he was full of personality everywhere, while Leo is more shy. He can be a fan of both and for Argentines it is a joy that both are from our country.