New 'Ultras' Doc Traces Global Football Fan Culture
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- Ragnhild Ekner directed the 90-minute documentary Ultras, which visits Sweden, Indonesia, Poland, Argentina, England, Egypt and Morocco to chart the worldwide rise of hardcore football fan culture.
- The ultra movement originated in Italian stadiums in the late 1960s, and Netflix has already commissioned one related film (Ultras, set in Naples) plus three series — Puerta 7 (Argentina), Furioza and The Hooligan (both Poland).
- In Ekner's framing, ultra-dom is 'an uprising against loneliness,' offering collectivism, ritual and belonging in an atomised age; members describe their groups as 'family' and 'where I feel at home.'
- The film documents stark geographic contradictions on gender: women are excluded from terraces in North Africa, while veiled young women take centre stage in Indonesia, and one South American female ultra calls the ban on makeup and rings 'liberating.'
- Ultras played a role in Egypt's Arab Spring, and a survivor of the 2012 Port Said massacre — in which 72 Al-Ahly fans died — tells Ekner he learned 'one can sacrifice oneself for a higher cause.'
- Ekner calls the film 'a tribute, not a critical review,' a stance the source argues sidelines ultras' criminal underbelly: Italian ultra bosses reportedly earn five-figure monthly sums from ticket-touting, merchandise and drug trafficking, and European ultra terraces have served as a recruiting ground for the far-right.
Why it matters: For viewers drawn to Ekner's 'uprising against loneliness' framing, the film's omissions matter: she openly calls it a tribute, not a critique, while the source itself notes Italian ultra bosses pull five-figure monthly sums from drug trafficking and that European ultra terraces have helped fuel the far-right — the very contradictions the documentary declines to interrogate.
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