Interview with Teodora Ana Mihai on "Hessel 85"

Few tragedies have left as deep a scar on European football as the events at Brussels’ Heysel Stadium on 29 May 1985. In Heysel 85, filmmaker Teodora Ana Mihai revisits that night, reframing the catastrophe of the 1985 European Cup Final between Liverpool F.C. and Juventus F.C. through an intimate, human lens, that focus on the dynamics that lead to questionable moral decisions and on the ordinary people caught in its wake. At the 76th Berlinale where her third feature premiered in the Special section, the Belgian-Romanian director spoke about the responsibility of dramatizing real events, confronting painful archives, and the challenge of balancing personal stories with broader historical context.