DIRECTOR’S STATMENT

…what sets my story apart?

As a Chinese immigrant in the early 2000s, my Dad was a complete newcomer to football. But when Premier League scouts noticed me, he became obsessed with the game.

As a foreigner navigating the world of a national institution, he had to fight for both my spotlight and his own respect on the touchline.

Academy Boy isn’t just about football - it’s about identity: an outsider trying to assimilate into a culture, while also confronting its biases. It made for wild moments - hilarious, contentious, controversial. Many of them made it into the film.

I relish the chance to put the niche but vital world of elite youth football on screen for the very first time - a pressure-cooker environment where futures are made and broken before kids even hit adulthood. If 180 kids go pro, this film is about the 1.5 million who don’t. I was one of them. Add in the intensity of Asian parenting - a familiar stereotype, but rarely, if ever, applied to sports.

I’m making this film to come to terms with the cost of an entire childhood spent chasing a dream - but also the beauty. It brought us together and threatened to drive us apart, but now I realise my father was also on his own journey, and ultimately, this is his story.