Thinking Football Film Festival is a film and football festival organized by the Athletic Club Foundation in collaboration with Sala BBK. Since its first edition in 2013, the festival has grown in prestige to become one of the most important football and film festivals in the world.
Thinking is held annually and, except for special editions, between twelve and twenty films selected by the Foundation’s cultural team are screened for a week at the Sala BBK hall in Bilbao. The films chosen to participate in the festival tell human and social stories that in one way or another are related to the world of football.
As a whole, the Thinking Football Film Festival program helps to better understand the power of the football industry in today’s world and its enormous influence on society. For this reason, the Foundation organizes film forum sessions after the screenings where issues of interest are discussed from a point of view that transcends sports. Representatives of the projected film (from the production team, the director or the leading cast), experts in the subject matter and representatives of Athletic Club participate in these talks, highlighting the regular presence of soccer players from our first men’s and women’s teams.
In these past years, celebrities from the world of football have passed through these Thinking Football talks, such as Osvaldo Ardiles, Alfonsinho, Rachid Mekhloufi, Lee Dixon, Thomas Hitzlsperger, Stefan Majewski, David May, Bob Bradley, Georgios Samaras o Ledley King, as well as Athletic footballers such as Aritz Aduriz, Ainhoa Tirapu, Carlos Gurpegui, Erika Vázquez, Iñaki Williams, Marta Unzué and Óscar de Marcos. Precisely the latter’s music group, Orsai, made up of players Asier Villalibre, Dani García, Íñigo Lekue, Mikel Vesga, Mikel Balenziaga, plus the aforementioned De Marcos, performed at the opening session of Thinking 2021.
Other cinematographic or social personalities who have participated in the debates after the screenings are Duncan Kenworthy, Michael Zimbalist, Gilles Rof, Gilles Pérez, Lou Englefield, Rafael Henzel, Miguel Alcantud, Victor Buhler, Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, Nico Schneider, Pedro Asbeg , Jeff C. Bell, Gustavo Vieira and Jane Preston.
All films are screened in the Original Version Subtitled in Spanish and, depending on the circumstances, in Basque or English.