Blind Ambition: An excellent vintage

Blind Ambition (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Not rated, and suitable for all ages

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

Inspiring underdog sagas are can’t-miss entertainment.

 

Inspiring underdog documentaries are even better.

 

This one’s a jaw-dropper.

 

Matching team pullovers are a nice touch, but Team Zimbabwe — from left, Marlvin Gwese,
Pardon Taguzu, Joseph Dhafana and Tinashe Nyamudoka — must train hard, if
they're to enter the annual World Blind Wine Tasting Championships.

Filmmakers Robert Coe and Warwick Ross have a winner with this profile of Joseph Dhafana, Marlvin Gwese, Tinashe Nyamudoka and Pardon Taguzu: refugees who risked life and limb to flee Zimbabwe during the violent 2008 presidential election and subsequent hyperinflation crisis, exacerbated by the ill-advised policies of Robert Mugabe.

They wound up in South Africa, which was ill-equipped to handle what eventually grew to roughly 1.5 million refugees from its northern neighbor.

 

Joseph, Marlvin, Tinashe and Pardon — who didn’t know each other — initially accepted whatever menial jobs they could find. Over the course of time, in each case entirely by accident, all four discovered they had an amazing talent for winetasting. 

 

This, despite the fact that none had even tasted wine before.

 

Marlvin, raised Pentecostal, technically isn’t even allowed to drink alcohol, although he cheekily points out — on camera — that since Jesus turned water into wine, drinking it surely must be allowed.

 

Eventually, each man became a well-respect sommelier in a top-notch South African restaurant … where, it must be mentioned, they often were the only Black presence among the staff and patrons.

 

They came to the attention of expat French sommelier Jean Vincent Ridon, who had the audacious notion to bring them together as exiled “Team Zimbabwe” for the 2017 World Blind Wine Tasting Championships, held each year in (where else?) Burgundy, France.

 

The film begins as Ridon gifts the four men with numbered, matching Team Zimbabwe pullovers (probably also the moment when Coe and Ross decided to make a film).

 

The quartet is irresistible. All four men have great camera presence; they’re modest, cheerful, passionate, a little bit shy, and obviously overwhelmed by how their lives have changed … and how they’re about to change a lot more.

 

Coe, Ross and editor Paul Murphy divide this saga between the intense training that takes place, during the weeks leading up to the competition, and each man’s back-story. They’re uniformly grim: even more sobering, given the matter-of-fact manner in which each recalls his personal experience.