Sundance Film Festival 2015 

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In Football We Trust
Tony Vainuku and Erika Cohn bring a little-seen culture to the screen.
By Scott Renshaw

Tony Vainuku realizes that he may be about to introduce film audiences to a culture they don't know much about: "There's no reality TV show about Polynesians," he says with a laugh.

In Football We Trust—co-directed by Salt Lake City natives Vainuku and Erika Cohn—explores Polynesian-American culture through the game that has created the culture's most prominent public figures in NFL, stars like Junior Seau and Troy Polamalu. But it's also an intimate study of three Utah families, as Vainuku and Cohn spent five years following four high school students trying to make their dreams of pro-football stardom a reality: Highland's Fihi Kaufusi, Bingham's Harvey Langi and Hunter's Vita and Leva Bloomfield.

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• Tony Vainuku & Erika Cohn

The project didn't begin, however, with a goal of focusing on kids. Seven years ago, Vainuku had an idea about a documentary that would be primarily about Polynesian-Americans in the NFL, from pioneers like Vai Sikahema (now retired) to contemporary players like Utah native Haloti Ngata. But eventually, that concept evolved into one inspired by Vainuku's uncle, Joe Katoa—a promising football prospect who, according to Vainuku, "had all the potential in the world to go to the NFL, but ended up going to prison."

"But," Vainuku says, "his story had already happened. So it was like, 'How do we tell that story?' Through kids in high school who were going through the same things that he went through in his life."

Vainuku received initial guidance and mentorship from Utah's own Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) before meeting award-winning producer Geralyn Dreyfous (Born Into Brothels), who introduced him to Cohn in 2010. Where Vainuku was inexperienced as a filmmaker, Cohn had been a student and eventually a teacher at SpyHop, then served as an intern with the Sundance Institute.

The filmmakers then set out to find their film's subjects, though Vainuku already had Harvey Langi in mind as a result of the athlete's prominence as a star college recruit at the time, and the Bloomfields because of their connection through their father to the Polynesian gang culture that often challenges the community. And Vainuku and Cohn found that the families were willing to trust them with their stories. "They were really supportive," Vainuku says, "because I was Tongan. ... They knew that I had their best interests at heart and that I could tell that story."

Finding willing subjects turned out to be the easy part. It was considerably harder dealing with the economic challenges of trying to make a documentary film on limited funds, and the project that they ambitiously thought might take only two years to complete instead stretched into five years. But that also allowed the filmmakers to capture a wide variety of challenges facing their subjects, from run-ins with the law to injuries, from being called the "salvation" of their poor families to a challenging freshman college season.

The result is something with echoes of the great 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams—about the pro-sports ambitions of two Chicago-area African-American high school students—and even employed one of that film's editors, William Haugse, in addition to getting encouraging feedback from Hoop Dreams director Steve James.

"If people associate [In Football We Trust] with [Hoop Dreams]," Cohn says, "that's a wonderful compliment."

"But I think that backs up ... how we knew this story was universal," Vainuku adds. "Everybody's going through [the experience of] trying to create opportunity in America."

Vainuku and Cohn come at the experience of being in the Sundance Film Festival lineup from very different histories. For Cohn, who recalls that, as a festival intern 10 years ago, she "schlepped all the producers around, got them coffee ... got groceries," it's familiar territory. "[Erika's] one of those rare breeds who knew what she wanted to do at 14," Vainuku says with a smile. "She was always destined to be in Sundance."

For Vainuku—the first director of Tongan-American descent in the festival's history—Sundance seemed like a different world. "I feel like I snuck in the back door, and now I just want to get a few drinks while I'm at the party," he says with a laugh.

But while the filmmakers will enjoy sharing their sold-out premiere at The Grand Theatre with the film's local subjects and their own families, the real goal is to continue advancing In Football We Trust's goal of educating youth, particularly those of Polynesian descent, about the pitfalls and opportunities they might face. Vainuku hopes to use the Sundance Film Festival platform to get that message out, and for fundraisers like the celebrity Strikes for Scholarships event—featuring NFL players like Ngata—on Jan. 25 at Park City's Jupiter Bowl. "It's said some films die at festivals," Vainuku says. "We want it just to be the beginning.

It's also a chance for Vainuku himself—who's also an entrepreneur, and launched his Soulpro clothing line during one of the hiatuses in production of In Football We Trust—to be an example of what other paths are available to Polynesians beyond professional sports. "Our tag line is 'Make your own history,' " Cohn says. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket; there's more to life than football. Tony is kind of embodying that through being the person behind the camera."