"Build It, and They Will Come”: A Conversation with Director Andreas Landgaard

Colm Dillane didn't build KidSuper to be a fashion designer. He built it to get a pitch. Growing up in New York, there was nowhere to play. So he put one on a rooftop in Brooklyn, no entry fee, no barriers, and opened the doors to everyone.

What came next was something bigger than football. A neighbourhood community. Amateur players reaching international stages. Those who had nowhere to go finding somewhere to belong.

"Build It, and They Will Come," is a short documentary produced in partnership between KidSuper FC and Veo. We sat down with director Andreas Landgaard to talk about filming football in a blizzard, and what Colm, Diallo, and Bamba taught him about what the game actually is in New York.

You were trying to make a film about football in New York in January. What actually happened?

Making a film about football in New York in January is hard. The arctic cold that hit while we were shooting almost broke the film. Every pitch in the city was buried under snow, including the rooftop at KidSuper, which was supposed to be the centrepiece. The whole premise of the film is this magical space where football happens, and we couldn't put a ball on it.

But because we couldn't film football where it was supposed to be played, we had to find it where it actually survives in New York in the gaps, the margins, the spaces nobody designed for it. Having KidSuper baller, Abdoulaye Diallo dribble through the intersections of a busy Manhattan street wasn't a compromise. It became the most honest image in the film. The snow took away what I had hoped to capture, but that restriction ended up giving us the film's best scenes, including my absolute favourite shots.

The film sits at the intersection of fashion, community, and football. How did you find the visual language to hold all three together without any one of them taking over?

Honestly, I could have made a feature-length documentary about all the cool things Colm is doing in fashion. But what really drew me in and what I learned matters most to Colm himself is his love of football. The fashion almost feels like a side quest that funded his real dream: to live out his football dream he's had since he was a kid. Colm never grew up… And that’s why he’s so cool. He just does whatever he likes!

Colm describes building the clothing brand to fund community projects, not the other way around. How did that framing shape the way you told his story?

In a city and a country that charges you for everything, Colm and KidSuper FC feel like a form of resistance. At the core of it, Colm just wants a space to play for his friends, for the ballers of New York, and for himself. A space they all felt was missing growing up.

Diallo puts it best: "If you're a baller, you're a baller… and if you're a baller, you're welcome." When I heard that line, I thought, yeah, that's the film right there. Football doesn't care where you live or what's in your pocket. It never has. It just needs a space, and that's exactly what Colm built.

The rooftop field is described as "impossible" and then "legendary." How do you film a space so that an audience feels that transformation?

You don't really film the space, you film people's reaction to it. Diallo's description of walking through that building for the first time does more work than any wide shot could. 

The other thing is that "impossible" and "legendary" aren't labels I put on the space; they came directly from the people in the film. Colm had been telling people about this rooftop pitch for years before he even had a store, and everyone thought he was crazy.

Several voices in the film talk about football as a substitute for violence and a home for the African diaspora in New York. How do you approach that kind of weight as a director without it becoming heavy-handed?

This is exactly why the access question matters. It goes way beyond football.

Ali Bamba Sillah, the founder of Bamba Sports, is probably the kindest and most beloved figure in the underground New York football scene. He explains it simply: "We have so much talent in our community and we just want a space where we can showcase it to the outside world."

The talent has always been there. It's never been the talent. It's the pitches that aren't there. It's the club fees that price families out. It's a system that was never really built with these communities in mind.

Spending time with Bamba was an incredible experience. He lives and breathes this community, and that comes through in every word he says. He gave the film a depth and meaning I couldn't have found anywhere else.

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