The Antetokounmpo brothers Giannis, Thanasis, and Kostas are the first family trio to have rings in the NBA. Kostas received his in 2020 with the Los Angeles Lakers, then Giannis and Thanasis in 2021 with the Milwaukee Bucks. The Antetokounmpos have carved themselves a legacy in the NBA, though it wasn’t easy. Rise provides context to that, following their parents Charles and Vera Antetokounmpo’s emigration from Nigeria to Greece, their struggle to survive and provide for their five children, all while under the constant threat of deportation.
Rise stars Manish Dayal, Taylor Nichols, Maximiliano Hernández, Yetide Badaki, Dayo Okeniyi, Uche Agada, Ral Agada, McColm Cephas Jr. Elijah Sholanke, Nicolas Politis, and more. It’s directed by Akin Omotoso and written by Arash Amel. Additional to the human elements, there’s plenty of basketball action to be seen throughout the movie, whether it be the brothers’ first time playing at an outdoor court or high-level scrimmages.
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Ahead of the sport-dramas release on Disney+ on June 24, writer Amel joined us to discuss resonance and writing the film.
Rise and Resonance of the Antetokounmpo Story
“When the project was first brought to me by Disney, I immediately connected to it on an entirely different level than I expected. I’m not Nigerian and I didn’t know everything about basketball before I came to the project, but what I did connect to, and when I realized this movie was going to be profound, is the universality of the story. This sense of being an outsider in a country you call home, being culturally different from your own roots, and culturally different from the country that you’re born in. And so, having to create and carve your identity, these two parts of who you are, like in the story of the brothers, I really felt a kinship and a connection to that,” explained Amel, discussing how the Antetokounmpo story resonates with him. Amel is an England born Iranian who went back and forth living between the two. He noted he was never under any threat of deportation, but this connection nonetheless provides a heightened emotional resonance.
“Whether you’re Nigerian of origin born in Greece, or whether you’re Iranian origin and in the United Kingdom, you have to carve a unique sense of identity for yourself. That really becomes about the family that you have… that’s where I felt I can tell the story… the overarching story, the human story… there always has to be that universal human connective tissue first, to actually make the sports meaningful in terms of not just winning, but what that winning actually means from a human-interest standpoint.”
Raising the Stakes in Rise
Disney+
Rise sees plenty of highs and lows for the family, some which deal with heavier weight than others. The brothers see personal highs when they dominate on the court, yet experience lows as they struggle to be fully accepted as legitimate. The parents experience the same, often in tandem to raising children who are subject of such struggles.
“There’s a scene at the beginning of the movie where they go to see their lawyer… and the lawyer tells them to stay hidden and to get a payroll job, and then sets out the path to them becoming legitimate. Then, the path of them actually becoming legitimate is extremely precarious and not workable. It’s not a flashy scene, but there’s a moment that lands with me every time,” said Amel. “That’s very common to immigrants. It’s applied very universally to both legal and illegal immigrants, in terms of trying to legitimize yourself in a place. It was so profound in terms of setting up the stakes… because that really sums up the catch 22 of their situation.”
It is these stakes, the need for legitimization and personal growth, that allows for sports movies to really work, explained Amel. You can make a sports movie that focuses on victory, but this needs to be defined correctly within the context of what it means for the character to truly win or lose.
“It’s a lot of human stakes that are not necessarily around the sport… it comes down to it not being about winning or losing, because you can have an ending like Tin Cup where the losing actually becomes the winning, because it becomes about a character who realizes their own self sense of identity, and overcomes their own demons simply by playing by their own rules and achieving something personal, even though they lose The Masters… victory isn’t really about winning or losing. It’s about achieving personal growth and personal closure. I don’t want to say anything about the ending of Rise, even though some people may think it’s obvious what happens, but I’d like to think that it actually isn’t. The way that we framed it should be pretty emotionally surprising.”
Amel is currently in pre-production as producer on Fred & Ginger, based on his original screenplay, and his screenplay for Snafu is soon set for theatrical release. He’s also the screenwriter for the Paramount Pictures feature film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
