Ange & the Boss: Puskas in Australia

To our generous donors,
We did it! ANGE & THE BOSS – PUSKAS IN AUSTRALIA has a national cinema release in March. You helped us get there, and for this we are so grateful. 143 of you raised $87,553 with five or six large donors contributing the bulk. But every act of generosity counted, and we are now in the process of upgrading our licences to all media (and not just film festivals). That is an expensive business, but this is finally an invitation to enjoy the film, rather than yet another ask (although the donation portal is still open!😀)

Sessions & tickets

The Q & A tickets are all live on our website, but there are also non Q&A sessions that aren’t live yet. We nevertheless wanted to post so you would have a good crack at the best seats.
The cinemas that aren’t Q&A sessions but will have screenings on opening weekend 15-16th March are — (Melb) Pennylane Moonee Ponds, Brighton Church Street, Balwyn; (Bris) James Street; (Syd) Norton Street; (Adel) Nova Prospect; (Perth) Raine Square; (Canberra) Electric cinema.
These are all Palace cinemas, and tickets will be live shortly. https://www.palacecinemas.com.au/movies/ange-and-the-boss-puskas-in-australia

The Q&A sessions all have live tickets links now. They are listed below as well as the website: https://angeandtheboss.com/

Melbourne
Thurs 13/3 – Palace Pentridge Coburg, 6.30pm, guests Gus Tsolakis and Peter Khalil MP
Fri 14/3 – Nova Carlton, 6.30pm, guests Paul Trimboli and Francis Leach
Sat 15/3 – Classic Elsternwick, 3pm, co-director Rob Heath joins us;
Sun 16/3 – Palace Westgarth, 3pm, guest Kimon Taliadoris (pre film)
Sun 16/3 – Lido Hawthorn, 3pm, guest Kimon Taliadoris and Libbi Gorr;
Sat 22/3 – Cameo Belgrave, 3pm, Hungarian community special
Sat 22 & Sun 23 and Tues 25/3 – Thornbury Picture House, 6pm, guest David Bridie (Sun only)

Geelong
Sun 22/3 – The Pivotonian, 1pm, with guest Steve Horvat

Sydney
Mon 17/3 – Norton Street Leichardt, 6.30pm (film maker introduction to film)
Mon 17/3 – Ritz Randwick, 7pm, guest Daniel Garb (Q&A post film)

Brisbane
Thurs 27/3 – Palace Barracks, 6.30, (film maker introduction to film)
Thurs 27/3 – Five Star cinema, New Farm, 6.30pm (guest Daniel Wright)

Adelaide
Sat 29/3 – The Picadilly North Adelaide, 7pm, guest John Thompson-Mills

If your local independent cinema isn’t listed above, let us know (tony@tonywilson.com.au) and we can try to include it in the run. We are likely to get to Tassie in May.

There are still lots of tickets available to every one of those sessions. We found at the Greek film festival that the Q&As sold fast, and six out of six were sell outs. Already, the Nova Carlton screening with Paul Trimboli and Francis Leach on opening Friday night is more than half full.

Festival news
Palermo was a joy for us, and terrific exposure for Ange & The Boss. We were finalists for Best Football Film but lost to the $1M budget doco ‘Giroud’ — which is excellent. Our doco also played in the International Sports Film Festival of India on the 12th of February (we didn’t go) and has been selected for the Pápa International Historical Film Festival from 24-27th April. Cam and I are going to that one!

Club screenings
One way we’re trying to fill our screenings is to marry up clubs and community groups to particular dates, or to organise private events. Again, get in touch if you want us to help you with tiles like this for your club or community event. (tony@tonywilson.com.au – I have a flyer I can provide to explain to club)

Spreading the word!

We’ve directed, produced, shot, edited, financed and are now distributing Ange & The Boss ourselves, and now we’re publicising the film ourselves too. We’ve got some great slots lined up – Radio National, SEN, Melbourne Local and we did 3AW Afternoons with Tony Moclair last Thursday. But we’re looking for any avenues to spread the word — newspapers, podcasts, Greek newspapers, radio interviews, television spots.

We’re also hoping that our champion DAF booster might copy the dates tile from this email, and maybe a promo image from the website and encourage friends and family by email and socials. If you’ve seen it, tell people you liked it! If you haven’t yet, tell them you helped the film get made, and what this era meant to you.

Thanks so much for your encouragement and excitement about this project.
We are beyond excited and can’t wait to see you in March, Make sure you come up the front and say hello,

Best wishes

Tony Wilson and Cam Fink
tony@tonywilson.com.au

Dear supporters and backers of ‘Ange & The Boss – Puskas in Australia’
The film had its European premiere in December, at the Paladino d’Oro in Palermo, Italy. Cam and I were there to lap up on the moment, and in a competitive field we were a finalist for ‘Best Football Film’ at the festival. In the end, the gold Paladin went to the film ‘Giroud’ which was a very worthy winner, a great football doco to look out for. We were honoured to be finalists, and had an amazing time in Sicily..
The great news is that thanks to the generosity of donors such as yourself, we will have a more general Australian theatrical release.in March 2025. At the moment we have confirmed five Melbourne cinemas as definite starters — The Nova in Carlton, the Classic in Brighton, the Lido in Hawthorn and the Cemeo in Belgrave and the Thornbury Picture House. We have the following Q&A sessions confirmed (Cam and I are definitely participating, others TBC):
Nova, 6.30pm, Friday 14th March (Tickets on sale ) https://www.cinemanova.com.au/films/ange-the-boss-puskas-in-australia
Classic, 3pm, Saturday 15th March
Lido, 3pm, Sunday 16th March
If sessions sell well, the cinemas will keep scheduling them! We might get two weeks, we might hang in there for a month or three! We have some copyright clearance bills to pay before the season opens (approx. $30k) and the Documentary Australia portal is still open if anyone is still feeling generous! The amazing fact is that the 143 of you receiving this email raised more than $87,000 for us. The film and all the joy it has already brought to football fans, the Greek community, the Hungarian community and Palermo filmgoers happened because of you. https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/project/ange-and-the-boss-puskas-in-australia/ . We’re also getting lovely notes from people who aren’t sports fans, aren’t Greek or Hungarian, and just like good films.
We’ve been invited to a film festival in Papas, Hungary in April, and my current job is emailing independent cinemas around Australia to take our film interstate in early April. If you know a representative of an independent cinema or a small group of cinemas near you, let me have their email address! We’re having an amazingly successful hit rate pitching ‘Ange & The Boss’ for special screenings and short seasons. (email tony@tonywilson.com.au)
Once we’ve exhausted the cinema angle, the hope is to have the film streaming by midyear. Certainly, it will be on DocPlay, a specialist documentary only streaming service.
Again, thank you for helping us with Ange & The Boss, at a time when we really needed it.
We’ve been elated at the way in which it is connecting with audiences, and can’t wait for 2025.

For release and news and screenings updates, sign up at https://angeandtheboss.com/follow
For trailer and audience reactions viait https://angeandtheboss.com/
For postcards and festival stories sign to my writing blog https://goodonewilson.substack.com/
Nova tickets https://www.cinemanova.com.au/films/ange-the-boss-puskas-in-australia

Best wishes and thank you,

Tony Wilson & Cam Fink
Ange & The Boss
Co-directors

Our Puskas film is finally making it to the big screen! It’s taken us seven years since we shot the first interview, but ‘Ange & The Boss – Puskas in Australia’ will screen in Sydney and Melbourne next week as part of the Greek Film Festival. Both are special ‘one-off’ screenings, with Q & A afterwards. In Sydney, it’s with South Melbourne Hellas legend Paul Trimboli, commentator Simon Hill, and us. In Melbourne, it’s with Trimmers, Miki Petersen and most likely, Santo Cilauro . At the Melbourne screening, there will be a strong contingent of the 1991 Hellas championship team, as well as wider Greek and Hungarian communities. It will be a really special afternoon and evening – already 500 of the 1000 seats have been filled.

The dates of the Greek Film Festival screenings are:
Sydney, Palace Norton Street, Leichardt, Thursday 17th October, 6.30pm, Tickets https://buy.palacecinemas.com.au/?cinema=129&session=323644#_ga=2.31443775.1044848075.1728279428-1850908545.1724997081
Melbourne, Astor Theatre, St Kilda, Sunday 20th October, 4.30pm, Tickets https://buy.palacecinemas.com.au/?cinema=180&session=5448#_ga=2.31443775.1044848075.1728279428-1850908545.1724997081

If you do come to the screening, please come up to Cam and me and say hello.

We absolutely wouldn’t be having these events without you and the Documentary Australia Foundation (DAF). It’s such a thrill for us, after thousands of hours of work. You are all thanked by name in the credits (except anonymous donors) We haven’t received a dollar from corporates or government (although we have a Screen Australia application on foot – fingers crossed), nor have we received payment ourselves. Every dollar donated went into the film and your crowd funding accounted for over $80,000 or approximately 60% of the money we have spent. It should be noted that 6 individuals provided the vast majority of that total. To our super donors, an extra special note of thanks. As things stand, we have paid the license fees that allow us to show the film in film festivals, as well as the DocPlay streaming service here in Australia (https://www.docplay.com/ – released late December). We are $40,000 of license fees away from being able to properly commercially release the film in Australia, and $80,000 away a worldwide commercial release. We are hoping there will be good news on this front once distributors have seen it. Enthusiastic supporters can still donate through DAF. https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/project/puskas-and-the-south-melbourne-hellas/?fbclid=IwAR0J-Wo3afYnh_k27TIBUGe3vIl80LAzjjuA4Si-wHpxug-RWjDc3WRPe8A

The other really exciting news is that we’ve been picked as a finalist at the Paladino d’Oro in Palermo. The ceremony is on 15th December and films are screening in the 3-4 days before that. Cam and I are going over to Italy, and hopefully this funny, quirky, story about a footballing colossus in suburban Melbourne connects with the wider footballing world. As Puskas himself said, ‘three possibilities in the football. You win, you lose, or you make the draw’. Hopefully we have some wins from here!

There will be information on the film at https://angeandtheboss.com/ or you can email me at tony@tonywilson.com.au . I’ve also been leaving updates on my newsletter Good one, Wilson https://goodonewilson.substack.com/

We’d love to see you at the Greek Film Festival, or even Palermo!

Thanks again,

Tony Wilson
Sepia Tones, Producer, ‘Ange & the Boss – Puskas in Australia’

After seven years of work, it’s full steam ahead on Puskas in Australia as we push for the line. The film is CREATIVELY COMPLETE. That means that every shot has been selected, and every piece of archival material set in place. The only stumbling block now is money. We need to pay our very significant copyright clearance bills, and we need to do audio post production and colour grading. We estimate that we’re chasing $200,000. We applied for but didn’t get MIFF Premiere Fund money, and are now attempting to establish a pathway to audience by sending the secure link to broadcasters and streaming services. We have had acceptance from Paramount for a free licence but are holding off for a better offer. Once we have pathway to audience, and we are desperate for this by Christmas 2023, we will qualify for some completion funding from Screen Australia and VicScreen. This will bolster us by approximately $50,000. We then are seeking some significant donations from two private individuals, and maybe our own money to finally get the film to screens. Tottenham coach Ange Postecoglou is on a hot streak in Europe, and NOW is the moment for this film. We are acutely aware of this, and consumed by the task of raising this money. We have proposed the idea of selecting a Puskas XI and a Hellas XI (Ange XI?) from the most generous donors to name in the film credits (or pre roll). We’re going to have a special night for these individuals, and roll out an offer of a night in a private theatrette with 16 friends watching the film for these super donors. We’re also collecting smaller donations from friends and football fans, and that’s all helping pay our copyright bills. Our project received a brilliant ‘pre release’ review in The Times UK which gave fundraising on this site a bit of a boost. https://goodonewilson.substack.com/p/our-film-reviewed-in-the-the-times