Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 11 June

Four new documentaries: Ange & the Boss and Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story are streaming on DocPlay, Bono: Stories of Surrender and Deaf President Now! are streaming on Apple TV+.

We’ve had a good week with documentaries (and the Doc Edge festival previews haven’t even started yet). The first two reviews are for everyone and the second two are for paid subscribers only. You know what to do.

If all you know about football manager Ange Postecoglou was his recent Premier League career – literally courting triumph and disaster at the same time – you might be surprised at the photograph of him smiling in the above montage. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.

He’s smiling in the film Ange & the Boss: Puskás in Australia because he’s remembering his playing career in the fledgling years of Australian professional football and specifically being coached by one of the greatest players ever to play the game. Hungarian Ferenc Puskás was a legend of the world game in the 50s and 60s, famously leading his national team to a 6-3 humiliation of England in 1953 – the first time England had ever been beaten at home.

He went on to a career at Real Madrid and then became a coach, guiding Greek club Panathainaikos to their first and only European Cup Final in 1971. Maybe that Greek connection is how he ended up in Melbourne in 1989, coaching semi-professional South Melbourne Hellas in the National Soccer League. Puskás liked a drink and loved a feed but overwhelmingly loved football and despite an ageing frame and a rotund physique, the footage shows that he still had some skills.

The football stories are lovely but the film is really a social history of Australia’s ethic migrant communities – their rivalries and their connective tissue. It’s a labour of love for co-directors Cam Fink, Rob Heath and Tony Wilson and – like Ange – we smiled from beginning to end.

Jumping to the top of a crowded list of great U2 films, Bono: Stories of Surrender does something remarkable by having something new to say about a rock star we have been hearing from for about 45 years. There are three things that make this film stand out. Firstly it is inspired by Bono’s excellent autobiography (Surrender) which came out just before Christmas in 2023. Secondly it is based on a solo Broadway show that Bono did to support that book (and to fill time while his bandmates were dealing with their own stuff). Thirdly, it is directed by (Wellington-born) Andrew Dominik, known for the features Killing Them Softly and The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford and for the great Nick Cave docos One More Time With Feeling and This Much I Know to Be True.

Actually, there’s a fourth factor and that’s Bono himself. He knows how ridiculous he is but keeps on going, searching for meaning, making connections, finding the love, regardless of how he is perceived. Despite all of the celebrity trappings and the mostly-unchecked ego, there’s an authentic person in there. The scale of the one-man show puts him in a new light, too. Watching a performer who is used to crowds in the hundreds of thousands – and the cutting edge of all the technological trappings – moving his own furniture around a mostly bare stage is humbling, as a story about a 65-year-old man, only just beginning to understand and appreciate his late father, should be.