‘Olympic Halftime’ Explores the Ruins of Vast Olympic Treasure Chests at Ji.hlava Doc Fest

variety.com:

Will Tizard Contributor As the hulks of multi-million-dollar stadiums around the world attest in Haruna Honcoop’s investigative doc “Olympic Halftime,” the greatest global games have also built a reputation for massive waste and deception. “It’s always the same story,” says the director about her subject, seen this week in its world premiere screening at the Ji.hlava Intl.

Documentary Film Festival – potential Olympics host cities are pitched a glorious spectacle that will also somehow be eco-friendly and bring new economic vitality to struggling districts. “But since the 1976 Montreal Olympics,” Honcoop says, “there are always debts for the host city and they pay these debts for 20, 30 years on average.

And there have been no Olympics since that have ended up in the black.” To make her point, Honcoop traveled the world for six years, sneaking into padlocked, disused arenas and gargantuan sports facilities that once played starring roles in Olympics games in Beijing, Tokyo and Athens.

She also visits future sites of the Paris 2024 games, where locals are already decrying the loss of parks and peace to developers’ projects for the upcoming events. “There have been efforts to reform the Olympics but they always fail and we always see the same kind of story,” Honcoop says. “And the International Olympic Committee is an NGO, basically, and it’s the richest NGO in the world, having all the profits from TV rights sales, all the income from the commercials and they even built a brand new headquarters in Lausanne.” The scale of budget overruns are also staggering, as Honcoop documents in her globehopping indie doc – much of it filmed secretly with handheld gear.