Free to Play (2014)

Follow three professional video game players as they overcome personal adversity, family pressures, and the realities of life to compete in a $1,000,000 tournament that could change their lives forever.

Stars:

Benedict Lim, Danil Ishutin, Clinton Loomis

Cast

Credited cast:
Benedict Lim	...	Self
Danil Ishutin	...	Self
Clinton Loomis	...	Self
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Toby Dawson	...	Self
Pete Grenier	...	Self
Tony Grenier	...	Self
Edwin Leong	...	Self
Jeremy Lin	...	Self
Karen Loomis	...	Self
Jon Robinson	...	Self
Jacob Toft-Andersen	...	Self

Storyline

Follow three professional video game players as they overcome personal adversity, family pressures, and the realities of life to compete in a $1,000,000 tournament that could change their lives forever.

---

Plot Keywords:

video game | assistant editor | dota 2 | three word title | mother son relationship | 

---

Taglines:

One game will change their lives.

---

Genres:

Documentary | Action

---

Did You Know?

Trivia

Dota 2 the featured game. Is still running ongoing tournaments the last international grossed over 18 million dollars in total prize pool, and most of that was funded entirely by the Dota 2 community!

---

Quotes

Danil Ishutin: Something knocks you down, you need to learn to get up.

---

Connections

Features Dota 2 (2013)

User Reviews

Well made documentary with little flaws.

Great documentary about the topic e-sports and the actual players behind it. The focus lies on 3 professional dota2 players (Dendi, hyhy and fear) and their way to, and eventually in, the biggest e-sports-tournament (1000.000$ prize pool), back to the date in 2011, but focuses not only on their gaming career but also on their familiar background and displays the flaws and positive aspects of the correlation. A further aspect is the difference between the 3 protagonists and their motivation which led them to gaming. I really sympathized with them in the end.

The movie was very well shot and got me easily entertained through the 75 minutes, although it was a little bit overly clichéd sometimes (keyword: hyhy's relationship) and people could say that the movie polarizes a bit, but that's only nitpicking. Though the international was nearly 3 years ago, I still got goosebumps by watching this and its also nice to see that e-sports is getting more and more of a deal.

Beside the fact that serious documentaries about this topic are hard to come by these days, I would definitely recommend it.

9/10

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English Chinese Russian Czech Bulgarian Japanese German Spanish

Release Date:

14 April 2021 (Norway)

Also Known As:

Бесплатная игра

Filming Locations:

Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Box Office

Budget:

$150,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Valve

Technical Specs

Runtime:

75 min

Color:

Color (HD)

Aspect Ratio:

16:9 HD