Watch the new trailer for Mudbloods, a feature length documentary about muggle quidditch.
The Endless Summer. Hoop Dreams. That episode of Saved by the Bell where they play wheelchair basketball and learn a valuable lesson.
Many great sports documentaries aren’t just about the sport; they’re about the culture that forms around it. Mudbloods looks to do the same for quidditch, a sport based on the game from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
Mudbloods focuses on the UCLA quidditch team and International Quidditch Association commissioner Alex Benepe in their journeys to the IQA World Cup in New York.
The trailer accurately shows glimpses of the team’s struggle for acceptance and the unique, close-knit family formed through the sport. Quidditch is one of the most accepting sports in the world; along with uniting jocks and geeks, the rulebook’s gender diversity requirement (named Title IX ¾) makes it one of the few sports at colleges that has to be inclusive of transgender and non-binary athletes.
Benepe has developed in to a cult figure among the quidditch community, but there’s not much public information about his behind the scenes work. The documentary gives viewers an inside look in to his work and the dangerous position he’s in trying to organize and run a world tournament for a new sport. As the trailer (and EVERY “no really, it’s an actual sport” conversation) will point out, quidditch is physical and injuries happen.* Add in that it’s less than a decade old growing at a rapid pace and some players having no background in sports safety and you can see why the job is so difficult.
While allowing a player with a possible concussion to continue playing in the FIFA World Cup final will only result in Taylor Twellman’s disapproval and some think pieces, a single injury in quidditch could shut down an entire team. For the entire history of the sport, the future has always been on shaky grounds. Quidditch could grow and become a game played by millions or it could crash and burn. Either way, quidditch is a great subject for a documentary and we’re interested in seeing more.
*Injuries are sometimes even used as a selling point. In a Huffington Post article promoting the 2011 IQA World Cup, Benepe joked, “There's nothing more bad-ass than being asked about a scar and saying, ‘Oh, that? Got it playing quidditch.’”
The documentary is currently available for pre-order here with an estimated release date of Fall 2014.
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