Roger Federer offers a tearful goodbye to a celebrated tennis career in the trailer for Asif Kapadia’s feature sports documentary Federer: Twelve Final Days, which dropped on Monday ahead of a June 10 world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
As the curtain comes down on his 24 years of competitive play in professional tennis, Federer struggles to contain his emotions in what the doc’s producers call a home video never intended for public viewing. “I thought until this morning I had emotions in check, but I can feel it coming up,” a vulnerable Federer says at one point in the feature documentary as his final tournament match approaches.
Federer: Twelve Final Days is directed by Kapadia, who is best known for documentaries like Amy, about the late Amy Winehouse, Senna, about Formula 1 race car driving legend Ayrton Senna, and a film about soccer great Diego Maradona.
The trailer includes words from fellow tennis greats like Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and John McEnroe, who appear in the feature documentary set to exclusively stream on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide from June 20.
In 2022, Federer announced he was retiring from professional tennis at age 41 after winning 20 Grand Slam titles over two decades. The cameras of Kapadia and co-director Joe Sabia also followed Federer at his final Laver Cup appearance as part of Team Europe.
His loss was followed by a tearful farewell to his fellow players and fans. The trailer also includes clips from Federer’s childhood and early tennis playing days, where he showed promise before turning professional.
“I used to watch the players with a sense of wonder, they were like giants to me. And I began to dream,” Federer reads into a microphone for Kapadia’s cameras and for which would become his official announcement that he was leaving the professional game.
Federer: Twelve Final Days is a Lafcadia Productions production. The film is produced by Kapadia and George Chignell.
