The Heysel 85 film is the new feature from Romanian-Belgian director Teodora Ana Mihai, built around the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster, and she used her stop at the Tokyo International Film Festival to talk about it and about what she is building next. That single sentence is the whole story in miniature — but the business behind it is where this gets interesting.
Key Takeaways
- The Heysel 85 film takes its title and subject from the 1985 European Cup final tragedy at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, where 39 fans died.
- Director Teodora Ana Mihai is best known for “La Civil” (2021), which played Un Certain Regard at Cannes and was Belgium’s entry for the International Feature Oscar.
- Her Tokyo appearance ties into the festival’s industry-facing market side, where filmmakers pitch in-development work to buyers and co-producers rather than just screen finished films.
- No confirmed India release, OTT deal, or dubbing plan exists yet for the Heysel 85 film — and that gap is itself a useful lesson in how festival titles travel (or don’t) to Indian audiences.
Who Is Teodora Ana Mihai?
Mihai is one of those filmmakers who built credibility the slow way — through documentary work before she ever touched a scripted feature. Her non-fiction background includes “Waiting for August,” a quietly devastating 2014 film about a Romanian child raising her siblings while their mother works abroad.
Her narrative breakout came with “La Civil” in 2021, a fiction feature inspired by real cartel violence in Mexico, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section and picked up a special jury mention there. Belgium later put it forward as its submission for the International Feature category at the Academy Awards. That’s the resume she walks into Tokyo with — someone who moves between hard, true-story subject matter and festival-circuit credibility, not someone chasing a quick commercial hit.
What Is the Heysel 85 Film Actually About?
The title does the heavy lifting here. Heysel Stadium in Brussels hosted the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus, and what should have been a football night turned into one of the worst disasters in the sport’s history. A section of terracing collapsed after crowd trouble pushed fans against a wall, and 39 people — most of them Juventus supporters — lost their lives. English clubs were banned from European competition for five years afterward, with Liverpool serving six.
That history is extensively documented, including in a detailed account on Wikipedia’s entry on the Heysel Stadium disaster, and it’s the kind of real-world tragedy that European filmmakers have returned to again and again — because it isn’t just a sports story, it’s a story about crowd control failures, hooliganism, and institutional denial that took years to untangle in court.
What hasn’t been nailed down publicly yet is the granular stuff: final cast, runway release date, or which territories have locked distribution. Festivals like Tokyo often host films — or filmmakers discussing films — at a stage where the financing and sales puzzle is still being assembled piece by piece, and that appears to be exactly where the Heysel 85 film sits right now.
Why Tokyo, and Why Does That Matter?
Here’s the part that gets missed if you only read the headline. The Tokyo International Film Festival isn’t purely a red-carpet event — it runs alongside an industry market where directors with projects at various stages sit down with sales agents, co-production partners, and territory buyers. A filmmaker “on” a project at Tokyo, rather than simply premiering one, is usually there to raise money, lock a sales agent, or test international appetite before the film is finished.
That’s a very different conversation from a red-carpet premiere, and it’s the one Mihai appears to be having with the Heysel 85 film. Gap financing, pre-sales against specific territories, co-production treaties between Belgium, France, and other European partners — this is the unglamorous machinery that decides whether a festival-circuit film actually gets made at the scale its subject demands, or stalls out as a passion project that never crosses into wide distribution.
How Do Festival Markets Like This Actually Work?
For readers who don’t follow the trade side of cinema, here’s a quick comparison of how major festivals structure this layer of business:
| Festival / Market | What It’s For | Typical Stage of Film |
| Tokyo Gap-Financing Market (TIFF) | Connecting in-development projects with financiers and co-producers | Pre-production to rough cut |
| Cannes Marché du Film | Global sales, distribution rights, territory deals | Finished or near-finished films |
| NFDC Film Bazaar (Goa, India) | South Asian co-production matchmaking, work-in-progress labs | Script to rough cut |
| Berlinale Co-Production Market | European and international financing partnerships | Development to early production |
Notice the pattern: the Heysel 85 film’s Tokyo stop fits the same slot that India’s own NFDC Film Bazaar occupies for Indian filmmakers trying to raise international co-production money. It’s not a glamour step — it’s the step that decides whether the film ever really exists in a releasable form.
What’s Next for Teodora Ana Mihai?
Mihai used the Tokyo platform to talk about her next feature as well, continuing a pattern from her career so far — true events, difficult subject matter, told through the lens of ordinary people caught inside institutional failure, whether that’s a cartel in Mexico or a stadium collapse in Brussels. Specifics on the next project haven’t been made public in detail, which tracks with how early-stage pitches at these markets usually work: directors test the waters with buyers before locking a script publicly.
What’s clear is the throughline in her filmmaking choices. She isn’t jumping genres for the sake of it. Each project so far has been rooted in something that actually happened, dramatized with a clear point of view rather than a dry recreation.
Will the Heysel 85 Film Reach Indian Audiences?
This is where the “pan-India” conversation Indian trade writers love to throw around actually becomes relevant — and also where it gets misused. A European arthouse title about a 1985 stadium tragedy is never going to get a wide multiplex release across Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada screens simultaneously, and calling that kind of rollout “pan-India” would be exactly the lazy marketing shorthand worth pushing back on.
The realistic path, if the Heysel 85 film gets picked up for India at all, runs through festival slots at MAMI Mumbai or IFFI Goa first, and then — if a streaming platform sees value — a subtitled (rarely dubbed) acquisition for a niche international-cinema shelf. That’s a far smaller, far more specific journey than the one trade headlines imply when they toss around “global release,” and it’s worth being precise about that distinction rather than inflating expectations.
FAQ
What is the Heysel 85 film about?
It’s a feature from director Teodora Ana Mihai built around the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster in Brussels, where 39 fans died during the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus. Full plot and cast details haven’t been confirmed publicly yet.
Who directed the Heysel 85 film?
Teodora Ana Mihai, a Romanian-born, Belgium-based filmmaker whose previous feature, “La Civil,” premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2021.
When will the Heysel 85 film release?
No confirmed release date exists. Her Tokyo appearance suggests the project is still moving through financing and co-production stages rather than a finished, release-ready cut.
Why was Teodora Ana Mihai at the Tokyo International Film Festival?
To discuss the Heysel 85 film and her next project, in a festival setting that also runs an industry market connecting filmmakers with financiers and co-production partners.
Will the Heysel 85 film get an India release?
Nothing is confirmed yet. If it arrives in India, the most likely route is a festival screening followed by a niche streaming acquisition, not a wide theatrical rollout.
Conclusion
Strip away the festival-circuit language and the Heysel 85 film is a straightforward story about a director with a track record for hard true-story material, raising money for her next hard true-story. Keep an eye on Tokyo’s market slate over the next few weeks — that’s usually where you find out whether projects like this actually get financed.