“San Siro is beautiful, and its architecture was exciting to be studied and animate,” says Yuri Ancarani, who, although self-confessedly not a football fan, filmed the legendary Italian stadium – home to clubs AC Milan and Inter – on match days throughout the 2013/14 season. “Although this is an open place, my idea was to convey a sense of lockdown and claustrophobia. All the shots I made thus contribute to emphasize this feeling, albeit in the context of the magnificent grandeur of the stadium.”

“I began to look at the stadium as a place of attraction for the masses, a sort of pagan temple”

A symbol of Milan as much as La Scala opera house or the city’s world famous Gothic Cathedral, for many football fans worldwide San Siro is synonymous with the beautiful game. However, in Ancarani’s poetic film, also director of the symphonic marble film Il Capo, the Italian has created a feeling of quiet devotion and monasticism.

“I was in Dubai for another project,” says Ancarani of the inspiration behind San Siro, “and in every public place the television transmitted the same image: a still shot of the Kaaba [the building at the center of Islam's most sacred mosque, Al-Masjid al-Haram]. This was surrounded by a huge vortex of pilgrims in prayer. I saw in those images a similarity with the [TV] shots from football stadiums on Sundays. I began to look at the stadium as a place of attraction for the masses, a sort of pagan temple."