When We Were Kings

The living boxing legend Muhammad Ali did everything to keep up his image. Of course, by winning almost all his bouts, but also by means of the shows he put on for the press and the audience before, after and even during the matches. This documentary presents a beautiful portrait of ‘The King’, based on interviews with people like such as Norman Mailer, biographer Thomas Hauser and director Spike Lee, and a lot of footage that in many cases has not been shown before. The leitmotif is the legendary ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, the fight for the world heavyweight boxing title against George Foreman, who was considered unbeatable. The tension carefully builds up in the film, presenting a frightening-looking Foreman, journalists who declared Ali beaten before a blow had been struck, and Ali himself, who contributed to the creation of a legend by introducing a battle cry that emerged from hundreds of thousands of throats at the right moment: Ali, boom-ba-yé!