Joe Sabia got his five minutes of online fame in 2007 when, as an employee of HBOlab, an experimental division of HBO, he created Seven Minute Sopranos, a fan edit summarising the six seasons of The Sopranos in just seven minutes. The fan edit was uploaded to YouTube without prior approval from HBO – Sabia’s employer – and quickly went viral. A few years later, Sabia launched the fast-paced interview 73 Questions for Vogue, which brought him significant recognition. In one of the episodes, Sabia interviewed Roger Federer at Wimbledon, at the beginning of the tournament where Federer would eventually lose in a remarkable final against Novak Djokovic. This would turn out to be Federer’s last Grand Slam final, marking the beginning of a quiet end to his career, characterised by injuries and surgeries.

When Federer decided to retire from professional tennis in 2022, he recalled the interview with Sabia and invited him to film his final moments in tennis – his farewell message to the fans, along with interviews and various observational scenes, which Federer claims were not originally meant to be seen by the public. It’s hard to believe that in an era where content dictates all, this footage could have remained buried in a screening room in one of Federer’s Swiss villas. Eventually, Federer was persuaded to share the footage with the fans. To lend the project some credibility, Asif Kapadia, known for his adept use of archives and a different kind of approach than the typical talking heads format (his documentaries Senna, Amy, and Diego Maradona stand proof of that), was brought on board.

Some of the film’s most interesting moments are when we see Federer-the man relating to Federer-the persona. Like the scene where Roger tells a friend that he thinks fans would like to see him cry at his retirement match since he had done it many times before.

Of course, there’s a significant difference: Kapadia directed those documentaries years after Winehouse and Senna had passed away; as for Maradona, he died the year after the premiere of the film that bore his name and had not played for over two decades. This is not the case with Roger. The key to understanding the film is offered by Federer’s agent at one point when he recalls the famous cliché: “They say athletes die twice.” (The first time, obviously, when they retire.) Which makes Twelve Final Days an hour-and-a-half-long first wake, but in the present tense and from Federer’s perspective.

It must be said: the fact that the deceased is Roger Federer himself helps the film. Much could be written about the role Roger’s charisma and style played in making him a world celebrity. And the film, like any true hagiography, shows nothing that might tarnish this aura. (Although, of course, Roger didn’t always look like the film portrays him: as a young landowner at various ages, descended as if from the Alps of The Sound of Music, with a racket in one hand and a white wool sweater over the other. But also like that.) Still, Roger’s intelligence is evident, and some of the film’s most interesting moments are when we see Federer-the man relating to Federer-the persona. Like the scene where Roger tells a friend that he thinks fans would like to see him cry at his retirement match since he had done it many times before.

Unfortunately, though, the film is not a Federer on Federer of sorts. These episodes, where Federer’s self-awareness breaks through the constructs of the format and begins to outline something that could look like a portrait, are relatively few. Instead, Federer’s portrait is delivered to us ready-made, already framed and nailed to the wall. And as a viewer, when yet another voice begins to sing praises to him, what you hear instead are the hammer blows. (Federer may now be dying for the first time, but not his admirers.)

Still, not all these praises sound the same. Mirka, Federer’s wife, has a genuinely moving talking head moment, especially since she has always been an elusive and distant figure with the media. The intensity of her bond with Roger becomes clear in just a few minutes, as her voice breaks when she talks about how she will miss seeing Roger play tennis because he does it so gracefully. And John McEnroe is also memorable, not hesitating in his characteristic style to compare Federer, the most beautiful player he’s ever seen play, to ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. But this raises a question: we hear so often about how gracefully Roger played; why do we never actually see it?

In 2006, two years before committing suicide, American writer David Foster Wallace, who as a junior had been a decent tennis player in the Midwestern regional circuit, wrote about Federer: “A top athlete’s beauty is next to impossible to describe directly. Or to evoke. […] You more have to come at the aesthetic stuff obliquely, to talk around it, or — as Aquinas did with his own ineffable subject — to try to define it in terms of what it is not. One thing it is not is televisable. At least not entirely. TV tennis has its advantages, but these advantages have disadvantages, and chief among them is a certain illusion of intimacy. Television’s slow-mo replays, its close-ups and graphics, all so privilege viewers that we’re not even aware of how much is lost in broadcast.”¹

What we see in the film, after hearing McEnroe’s voiceover comparing Federer to Baryshnikov, is a montage of slow-motion, real-time replays taken from TV broadcasts. In each one, we see only Roger, never what’s happening across the net. Roger tensing. Roger serving. Roger reaching for a difficult ball. Roger floating in the air, weightless. None of this, however, helps us understand the beauty of his game. And if the film is a wake for his tennis career, then perhaps that should have been the thing to stay with us the viewers.

To which one could easily respond: maybe that’s not what the filmmakers intended. But the main problem is that in Twelve Final Days, this illusion of intimacy Wallace wrote about doesn’t just apply to the TV archive footage, where we are seemingly so close that we don’t realise how far we actually are from the subject. It’s defining for the entire film: everything we see is an extended illusion of intimacy. Even the home video moments of Federer limping, injured, around the house. Even the moments in the locker room where Federer and his peers gossip, half-jokingly, half-seriously, about other players on the circuit. Even the moments exposing the inner workings of Federer’s PR machine, from conversations with Anna Wintour to the meticulous timing of social media posts. And what we see behind the curtain, inside this machine, is only what it allows us to see. Who knows what remains truly buried in that screening room in Switzerland?

¹The essay Federer Both Flesh and Not was first published in 2006 in The New York Times’ online magazine Play under the title Federer as Religious Experience.

Federer: Twelve Final Days is available to watch on Prime Video.

Codrin Vasile

He studied directing at UNATC, where he wrote articles for Film Menu. He also wrote his degree paper on D.A. Pennebaker’s early filmography. He is interested in analog photography and video art. He hopes for a Criterion release of Shrek 2. He makes movies.