Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
The decisive years of Swedish soccer player Zlatan Ibrahimović, told through rare archive footage in which a young Zlatan speaks openly about his life and challenges. The film closely follows him, from his debut with the Malmö FF team in 1999 through his conflict-ridden years with Ajax Amsterdam, and up to his final breakthrough with Juventus in 2005.
Becoming Zlatan benefits from genuinely rare archive footage that gives unusual intimacy with a young Ibrahimović before he became a global icon, lending the documentary a compelling authenticity. The narrative arc from Malmö to Juventus is well-structured and benefits from Zlatan's naturally outsized personality. However, the cinematography is largely archival and functional rather than artistically distinguished, and as a sports biography documentary it follows fairly conventional talking-head and archive-footage conventions. The ending feels satisfying in the context of his Juventus breakthrough but doesn't transcend the genre. Overall a solid, above-average sports doc elevated by its subject's charisma and the rarity of its source material.