When you hear about these men’s stories, the immediate thought is of “Cool Runnings,” which details Jamaica’s first bobsled team, a similar band of outsiders participating in a sport that’s usually been the domain of white Western countries. But Robert Coe and Warwick Ross’ “Blind Ambition,” an inspirational, heart-wrenching tale about four Zimbabwean immigrants working in South Africa as sommeliers is different. It doesn’t deal in easy gags or low-hanging speeches. It understands both the thrill and the agony of desperately waiting for your dream to ripen on the vine.
“Kumusha” is a shona word for home, explains Tinashe. Much of this competition film concerns the importance of one’s origins, and the four men are often haunted by what they’ve left behind. Editor Paul Murphy effortlessly weaves through each sommelier’s painful personal history: Joseph and his wife Amelia (who we never meet) left their two-year-son behind with family, as smugglers took the couple across the South African border in a suffocating railway container. Joseph can still remember the images of other refugees fainting from the heat. Upon arriving in South Africa, the quartet, like many other refugees, witnessed violence against them. Footage from 2009 recalls the grisly images of refugees running through the streets of Johannesburg to escape bloody beatings and vicious reprisals from white South Africans.
The team also frequently shares stories about the muggings that are still occurring in South Africa by distressed refugees. The quartet carry the burden of these memories and worries together through every tasting, over every hurdle they encounter in their fundraising efforts to attend the wine championship.
As Coe and Ross outline these tragedies, they also delve deeper into the wine world: The difficulty of identifying these vast and varying assortments by grape variety, country of origin, region, producer, and vintage. A subtle counterbalance is established with these men’s experiences. Their passion, self-attained knowledge, and dogged determination then takes center stage, since the World Wine Tasting Championship doesn’t just require one’s individual talent in a team setting. It also requires money, which naturally deters outsiders from competing (a key reason that, when a group picture of contestants is shown, they’re all white), and a coach. The quartet initially rope in Jean Vincent, South Africa’s coach, to temporarily guide them until Denis Garret, a formerly respected taster, can take over.