Malaysian blind football documentary Eye on the Ball gives a glimpse into a severely marginalised world, says director

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” So said the fox in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s infamous 1943 novella The Little Prince. Nearly 80 years on, the magnitude of these wise words is still being felt.

Meet Malaysian director Yihwen Chen, whose maiden feature-length documentary Eye on the Ball follows a group of aspiring blind footballers in their journey to try to defend the Asean Para Games and also qualify for the World Blind Football Championships. Its domestic release in August was capped with a moving premiere in which players of Harimau Buta – the Malay name for the national team founded in 2009 – were treated to an audio description version.

“People often reject or fear things that they don’t understand, so I always try to make my subjects relatable by showing them doing things like everyone else,” said Chen, a former editor who found a calling in documentary filmmaking and video journalism. “When I met the football team, I was curious about how a blind person lives in this world. How do they use Facebook and how do they entertain themselves like the rest of us? I learnt that they use screen readers to ‘read’ on their phones and laptops, and there are even Braille playing cards for the blind. I wanted to share these ‘discoveries’ with others.”

Chen documented the daily life and tribulations of national players Asri Arshad, Azwan Azhar, Rollen Marakin and coach Sunny Shalesh as the team tries to defend their remarkable 2015 Asean Para Games gold medal two years on. While it touches on the practical side of football – for example, the modified rules, field, equipment for the conventional five-a-side games between athletes with visual impairment (the ball has loose ball bearings inside to make sound) – the underlying message is of social marginalisation.

“Like any good storytelling, you need to have different characters – the star player, the rookie, the ‘bad boy’, and naturally in any sports-centred film, the coach,” said Chen, who before pitching the idea tried playing alongside the team with a blindfold on. “In the Malaysian context, Rollen’s story is very important because he comes from East Malaysia, Borneo Island, where the infrastructure is still very poor and underdeveloped.