Guys and Balls

Guys and Balls (German: Männer wie wir, literally Men like us, UK title: Balls) is a 2004 sports comedy/romance film by German American director Sherry Hormann about a gay goalkeeper who assembles a gay-only soccer team to play against his ex-team, which fired him due to homophobia. Plot Ecki (Maximilian Brückner) lives with his parents who own a bakery in Boldrup, a (fictitious) small German town near Dortmund. Football, the German national pastime, is particularly popular in this heavily industrialized region and Ecki has been an avid and successful player in a local club FC Boldrup, since his childhood days. In a decisive game, he fails to keep a ball at a penalty and the team fails to get the promotion to the district league. The team are devastated and get drunk at a party. Ecki is then evicted from the team, with his mistake being used to cover the real reason—the revelation that he is gay that comes about when he is observed by some of his teammates kissing another player Tobias on the mouth. Ecki is defiant and immediately sets out to form his own team and beat his ex-teammates at their game. So he sets off for Dortmund to find members for his new team with the help of his sister Susanne, who is living there. From the fans of his favorite club Borussia Dortmund he finds confusion, but he gradually succeeds in others places, such as a kebab shop and the leather bar 'Steel Tube' to recruit more homosexual players for his team. Among the greatest hopes are the two Brazilians Ronaldo and Ronaldinho and the actually hidden heterosexual bookseller Klaus.