For many people, soccer is the greatest religion in the whole planet, counting more than 2 bilions of fans in the world. Cinema and soccer are similar. In their modern form, they were born together: at the end of the 19th century. A soccer match lasts half an hour. More or less, it has the same duration of a film. Cinema has its stars. Soccer too. Soccer and cinema are recognisable not only from their players”, but also from their willing “misplayers”, whose clumsiness is veiled in bar talks and our festival is also and especially about williing directors . Cinema, like Soccer, is made through players and coaches who told stories, changed the rules, showed values, people that RIFF decided to remember with Giuseppe Sansone and Paolo Piras. They also have something in common: they both work for the RAI telling stories and they both wrote two books about soccer. Sometimes, soccer and cinema meet each other in a film; men’s and love’s stories, biographies. The meeting is preceded by the projection of the film “Offside” by Jafar Panahi, the iranian dissiding director currently under arrest. “Offside” follows the events of a girl, who dresses like a man in order to watch a soccer match at the Tehran’s stadium. In Iran, in fact, women are forbidden to go to the stadium. The film, Orso d’argento a Berlino, tells an incredible story treated with lightness