A still from one of the films to be screened by Max Mueller Bhavan

Germany?s famous trainer Sepp Herberger, Honduran street children, Turkish girls in Berlin and Tibetan monks ? they all let us share their fascination for ?the beautiful game? and find a common ground that transcends barriers?

In celebration of the FIFA World Cup in Germany, the Goethe-Institut, with the help of the German Foreign Office, has stitched together an international film package consisting of eight feature films and five documentaries, uniting people from all walks of life, using the universal language of football.

The football film fest, Das Runde im Eckigen (The Round in the Rectangular), organised jointly by Goethe-Institut, Max Mueller Bhavan Calcutta and Nandan, West Bengal Film Centre, will be screened at Nandan I & II from May 2 to 9, with repeat screenings later at the MMB auditorium.

?Football films depict the beauty of the sport and the competitive spirit as well as normal, everyday life. Themes based on the legendary ball game include team spirit, fan culture, family photographs, religion and cultural differences,? says S.V. Raman of MMB.

The package kicks off with Hannes St?hr?s One Day in Europe ? a film about a match, a Champions League final that keeps the continent enthralled, ?with a finale that is unique in the history of the game? ? and yet it is ?a match that never happened?.

In Football As Never Before, Hellmuth Costard, one of the most important experimental filmmakers in German cinema of the 1960s and 70s, follows every move of a player on the field over 90 minutes, using eight 16mm cameras.

The festival package includes the 1927 silent classic The Eleven Devils, directed by Zoltan Corda. On the one side is the poor but honest workers? team, on the other, the stinking rich club ?International?. In the end, the film offers a hymn to the ?unifying idea of sport? ? still relevant after eight decades.

In The Champions, (direction: Christoph H?bner and Gabriele Voss), four footballers dream of a successful career, and are willing to work long and hard for it. The film takes us behind the scenes of the world of professional football with rare patience, care and affection.

Matthijis de Jongh looked up the FIFA world rankings on the Internet and discovered that, of the 203 countries listed, the bottom two places were occupied by the Kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas and the Caribbean island of Montserrat. A great idea was born: a ?decider? between the two ? in The Other Final, directed by Johan Kramer.

Liberated Zone directed by Norbert Baumgarten is set in former East Germany. For the 35,000 inhabitants of S?sslen, a fictitious small town in Brandenburg, football really matters. Ever since African striker Ade Banjo joined the team, their local club has not lost a match in their regional league, and the people of S?sslen begin to dream of a successful cup run in the DfB-Pokal, the fiercely contested knock-out competition of the German FA.

Gil Mehnert, in his touching odyssey Depth of Field, portrays Hans G?nter Korte in his final hours recalling a love that was ?both exhilarating and complicated?. The tale that the dying man tells the night nurse in hospital may or may not be true ? the film asks only that we engage with it.

Subhro Saha