At the Roxie, ‘Fútbol on Film’ Celebrates Soccer as the People’s Sport

When the FIFA Men’s World Cup comes to the Bay Area in June and July, much of the conversation will revolve around the economic benefits of hosting these mega sporting events.

But for soccer fans like Daniel Díaz, a purely monetary focus misses the mark. On Sunday, March 29, Díaz, via the documentary platform CiNEOLA, will present a program at the Roxie called “Fútbol on film.”

“We wanted to put together a program that spoke to football in a way that really focuses on the good, the people, the humanity around the sport,” he tells KQED. The goal, he says, is to look at the sport from an “anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist lens.”

The 90-minute program starts at noon with a series of three short documentaries focused on Latin American football: RJ Sanchez’s Barra brava, a 16mm film about Colombia’s devoted soccer fans; Roberto Baggio, about filmmaker Henrique Cartaxo’s memories of Brazil’s 1994 World Cup victory; and Díaz’s own short Junior tu papá, which revisits memories of a 1993 championship game played in Barranquilla, Colombia 17 days after Pablo Escobar’s death.

But the main event of the day for many in attendance will be a teaser of Díaz’s current project, a feature-length documentary about San Francisco City Football Club, the oldest community-owned soccer club in the United States.

The team, which has been around since 2001 and competes in the semi-professional USL League Two, has long played its home games at Kezar Stadium. Over two decades, SF City FC has gathered an ardent fan base of local supporters, people who fill the stands with black and gold gear, drums and flags, chanting “Oh when the fog / comes rolling in.” (Sponsored by Muni, the team has some of the best jerseys in the game.)

But in May 2025, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a new minor league soccer team founded by financial executives Geoff Oltmans and Marc Rohrer — the confusingly named Golden City FC — would be coming to San Francisco. Shortly after, the Board of Supervisors voted to give the nonexistent team a 15-year-contract at Kezar (with the option of three five-year extensions) in exchange for $10 million worth of renovations to the stadium.

SF City FC was blindsided. The deal meant they would be able to play just one game a season on what had been their home field. Nearly a year later, Golden City FC has yet to materialize, and the team’s website is now broken.

All of this provides plenty of dramatic fodder for Díaz’s Roll Fog, which he will continue to film through the team’s 2026 season, which opens with a home game at San Francisco State University’s Cox Stadium on May 3.

“This is going to be the first time we’re showing anything publicly for the project,” Díaz says of the 12-minute teaser screening at the Roxie. “We’re using it as an opportunity to introduce this project to the community that it is for and it’s about and that is ultimately participating in the production of it.”

A Q&A after will include a conversation between Díaz and Rei Dorwart of Fútbol by the Bay (which runs youth soccer clinics, among other activities), and members of SF City FC supporter groups the Northsiders, Kezar Union and Fault Line Offenders.

“This is a project that we want to really be through the fans’ point of view,” Díaz says. In that spirit, attendees are encouraged to wear their teams’ jerseys, and to bring scarves and flags to the screening. At the Roxie, Díaz says he hopes to create a “match day atmosphere” emblematic of how soccer brings disparate groups together in support of the sport.

“It’s about replicating everything that’s so great about the city that we’re in,” he says, “and how, at least in my mind, SF City FC does that as well.”

‘Fútbol on film’ screens at the Roxie Theater (3125 16th St., San Francisco) on Sunday, March 29 at 12 p.m.