“High viewership for Indian football from state contributed to focus on Kerala in Maitanam”: Misha Kumar, Director of FIFA+ Originals documentary Maitanam

India’s relationship with football is an interesting one. It certainly has no shortage of ardent fans across the country, whether they be followers of Premier League, La Liga, and the like, or of the Indian Super League as a result of the ISL’s admirable continued efforts in building up the Indian fanbase slowly but surely over the years.

At the same time, in a cricket-crazy nation, footballing stories can sometimes fly under the radar in terms of public awareness and attention.

With India being seen increasingly as the next big market for capturing fans for football globally, leagues such as the Premier League and La Liga, as well as multiple clubs such as Chelsea FC, Leicester City FC, Arsenal FC, Sevilla FC, Borussia Dortmund, etc., have been ramping up their India fan engagement efforts through various routes.

Not one to sit by idly, FIFA recently joined the fray in a push to have the “sleeping giant of world football,” as described by former FIFA President Sepp Blatter, represented on their new FIFA+ streaming platform via a 40-minute documentary titled ‘Maitanam.’

Produced by RISE Worldwide and directed by Misha Kumar, Maitanam — described as a 40-minute love letter to the beautiful game — covers six unique footballing stories from across Kerala and joins an exclusive list of content from around the world as part of the FIFA+ Originals available worldwide.

Being hardly an occasion to miss out on, Sportskeeda caught up with Misha Kumar, Maitanam’s director, recently to find out more about what went behind creating this ode to football in Kerala and what is ultimately a fan engagement piece for FIFA.

Speaking about why Kerala was specifically chosen as the focus for this documentary, given that other parts of India, such as the North East, Goa, West Bengal, etc., also have a rich footballing culture, he mentioned:

“For most ventures of this nature, the answer is a mix of pragmatism and passion. When we were first approached with the possibility of doing football projects in the form of short-form documentaries, there were various ideas pitched. Some centered around specific states, some around individuals, etc. With Kerala, we felt that the passion (for football) is really obvious, which is something that we have tried to capture in the documentary.”

Reflecting further from a commercial and pragmatic point of view, he added:

“If you look at the numbers and results, Kerala is doing very well in terms of trophies, league titles, etc. The recent Gokulam Kerala men’s team title and the Santosh Trophy win (after Maitanam’s release) only serve as proof of this. Also, the key decision-makers felt that lots of the fandom and viewership for Indian football are coming from Kerala, as a factor in deciding to go with the state as the focus for the documentary. Having said that, we would not have been able to make a film of this nature without the passion actually being present for us to capture.”

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Evolution of Maitanam as project and its storytelling

Storytelling for successful fan engagement content pieces like Maitanam is a fine art. For football fans and anyone who has seen the documentary, the stories captured in Maitanam wherein women’s football is highlighted through the inspiring story of the Gokulam Kerala women’s team, priests playing football barefoot, little girls training under nonagenarians, and more transcend social, cultural, and demographic boundaries. Reflecting on how they went about digging up these specific stories for Maitanam within Kerala, Misha said:

“While I did do my own research as well, I cannot take the lion’s share of the credit for any of that. I had a lot of support from RISE Worldwide, who suggested some of the stories or topics to explore, such as women’s football. The Indian print media has also been very good about covering some of the lesser-known stories of Indian football. Thus, in our research, the Santosh trophy village and LiFFA is something I read about at a fairly early stage. A huge amount of credit goes to Shaiju Damodaran, the famous Malayalam commentator known for his coverage of the ISL. Not only did he serve as our narrator, but he was also the one who led us to the nonagenarian’s story.”

Any good piece of content also has to make sure it has a broad enough context that is understood by as wide an audience as possible. With India being a land of diverse languages and cultures, and Maitanam being exposed to a global audience via FIFA+, this was also pivotal for the documentary.

Expressing that while they had to keep in mind their core audience, he could only hope their work resonated with a national and global audience that went beyond Kerala, Misha also touched upon how they went about crafting this context, commenting:

“Certain emotions are universal despite cultural differences. People can see a nonagenarian running around on the field and connect with him irrespective of their cultural background.”

Coming to how his involvement with Maitanam began, the director fondly recollected:

“I was first approached in June 2021 about this project. After working on the concept and getting approvals on the stories we wanted to cover, Covid-19 and some other hurdles meant we finally started filming in December 2021.”

Adding to the nature of what his role looked like on a day-to-day basis while working on Maitanam, he said:

“What surprises many is that we shot for a total of only four days. We started in and around Trivandrum with the Santosh Trophy village, the Christian academy. From there, we moved on to Kochi and Thrissur, where we shot with the Gokulam Kerala women’s team as they happened to be there for a camp. We shot a few ancillary interviews later, such as those with the Kerala Blasters players in the ISL bubble. Since the post-production process took about two and a half months, the overall production hence lasted about three months, or about nine months if you look at it from when I was first approached for this project.”

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Maitanam seen through lens of evolved sports media landscape

The landscape of football and sports media has evolved a fair amount over the years in India. This is an evolution that Misha Kumar has experienced and been a part of throughout his career. He started his career as a sports journalist at what was then ESPN Star Sports and then went the freelance route in 2008 while overseeing a sports broadcasting program for Sportzworkz Media Institute in 2019.

Broaching the subject of how this evolution of sports media as well as football through the ISL, IWL, I-League, Premier League, etc. shaped the content in Maitanam, Misha said:

“It did influence our content. You can see the ISL and the Manjappada - the official supporters club of Kerala Blasters featured in the documentary. This is something that obviously would not have been there twenty years ago.”

Diving further into the impact of this evolution, he added:

“The Gokulam women’s side was also relevant here. While you had women’s football earlier as well, it was perhaps not supported to the degree it is now in an organized and corporate manner.”

Going a step beyond addressing some criticisms faced by Maitanam, mainly that it did not cover the 1970s and 1980s period, when Kerala football was arguably at its peak, Misha noted:

“This is a fair criticism, but perhaps the growth of football has only happened now in terms of going to a much broader fanbase. Having a high-level product delivery as is seen in the ISL now, something that to a degree did not happen earlier, has helped propel this growth.”

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Working with RISE Worldwide on Maitanam

Maitanam sees Misha Kumar working as a director with James Rego, head of broadcast and production at RISE Worldwide (formerly IMG-Reliance), serving as producer.

Touching upon what kind of briefs and mandates he had and the experience of working with a giant of the Indian sports industry, Misha said:

“I was very fortunate as I got a lot of support from RISE throughout this project. My interactions were mainly with RISE, specifically James Rego, Gaurav Gala, and Sahil Phillips, and RISE would then interact with FIFA. After some initial creative brainstorming and sharing of suggestions, we eventually settled on the six stories and locations we wanted to cover. Post this, there was virtually no pushback or interference beyond the occasional creative discussion around which music to use, which story to start with, etc. This was a rare occasion that I have experienced such an amount of freedom in my 20-year career.”

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Making sports documentaries or biopics in age of OTT and heightened demand and awareness around sport

The rise of OTT streaming services combined with increased demand and fervor around quality storytelling via sport has meant that India has seen a steady increase of sports biopics and documentaries such as Sachin: A Billion Dreams, 83, etc., over the years.

Delving into his take on what makes a successful sports documentary, Misha pointed out:

“I would not want to pose as an expert here. For me, the connection with sport has always been the human angle. I am as enamored as anyone else with the skills shown by athletes, wickets taken, goals scored, etc. But the human connection is what has always drawn me to sport. Thus, with Maitanam, I tried to ensure that the stories were told in a way that appealed to this human connection.”

Adding that biopics are popular as people generally connect to the underdog story, eventually adding to the greatness of the person(s) portrayed, he stressed that while the sporting skill and greatness of that personality will always be present, what needs to be captured well is the underlying human connection and the spirit of the individual portrayed.

Moving on to give his take on whether India is going through a golden age of storytelling in sports with all the sports biopics and documentaries, Misha remarked:

“From a purely commercial point of view, I would have to agree. But the trouble is, and this happens in every industry, when one particular effort is successful, you have several copycats that spring up. Not all of them need to be of the same quality or bring the same enjoyment. Thus, quality content must rise to the forefront.”

For Misha Kumar, Chak De India was the film that really kicked off sports storytelling in India. After that, while some movies were memorable, he opined that these were few and far between.

As admitted by the director while signing off, producers and mainstream filmmakers were a bit skeptical about sport as a subject before Chak De India as it was looked at as a niche topic. With the dawn of a new era in storytelling in Indian sport and on the big screen, this seems to be a thing of the past.