On the floor of a gymnasium, teenagers sitting in a circle listen to a 2018 world champion recount a moment when everything was going well on the field, but much less on the inside. In front of them, no motivating speech, rather confidences about sleepless nights, matches played on a stomach in knots, days where getting out of bed required as much effort as training. This scene opens a film where the heroes of 2018 put away the medals to talk about what they have long kept to themselves.
This 53-minute documentary, entitled Diving heads, teaming up with mental healthbrings together Raphaël Varane, Olivier Giroud, Blaise Matuidi, Samuel Umtiti, Djibril Sidibé and Gaëtane Thiney in speaking circles with adolescents and young adults. Broadcast Tuesday, December 2 at 9:25 p.m. on TMC and on TV5MONDE, simultaneously on YouTube, on the L’Équipe website and application and on the Society+ platform, then available in streaming on TF1+ and on TV5MONDE+, this film highlights the
mental health in the center while the subject has been renewed as a Great National Cause for 2026. The players recount their periods of depression, loneliness, harassment or anxiety, echoing the stories of the young people who face them. An open-hearted meeting that transforms the locker room into a space of shared confidences.
“Diving heads”: when the 2018 world champions talk about their depression
Supported by the charitable collective Generation 2018the film is based on discussion groups where champions and young people talk to each other as equals. “Through speaking circles alongside young people who come to share their story, they exclusively reveal intimate moments of their periods of unhappiness, harassment, anxiety, depression, experienced alongside their success. These open-hearted meetings invite us to free our speech, better understand and heal these invisible wounds and find solutions.“, indicates the TF1 group in a press release. Raphaël Varane, sitting among teenagers, dares for example to look back on his beginnings in Spain by explaining: “I left France for Spain at 18. I was living the dream on a professional level but on a personal level, I was not doing well. I was depressed“, testifies for example Raphaël Varane in an extract broadcast by TV5MONDE.
For Blaise Matuidi too, the years of titles have not erased everything. “Mentally, it hasn’t always been rosy“, confides the former midfielder, evoking his doubts and his bouts of fatigue away from the cameras. Samuel Umtiti, who ended his career at 31, puts words to his deep isolation: “I returned to a loneliness that ruined me. At one point, I only got out of bed to go to training“, he says in the film, quoted by L’Équipe. Olivier Giroud talks about the fallout after the world summit: “When you have reached the Grail, the descent is not easy to manage“, before summarizing what this project brings: “We help others, but we also help ourselves“, explains the top scorer in the history of the Blues to TF1info. Champion Gaëtane Thiney sums up this emotional roller coaster with another image: “For me, if you go very, very high in your capacity to absorb, the moment it falls, you go very, very, very low“, while co-producer Wale Gbadamosi Oyekanmi underlines the effect of these confidences: “Their uninhibited words reassure and liberate. We didn’t just seek to raise awareness: we wanted to give the strength to speak, to act and to get help“, he explains in So Foot.
Young people, experts and multiplatform broadcast around the documentary on mental health
Opposite the stars, lesser-known but equally central first names: Opa, Nasrine, Pauline, Emy, Lilou, Zoé or Edouard tell of their depression, episodes of harassment, pressure from school or from social networks. To shed light on these exchanges, the documentary also gives the floor to specialists like Karine Chevreul, Olivier Bonnot, Isabelle Varescon and Cécile Traverse. They point out that 13 million French people are affected by mental disorders each year, that a quarter of the population will experience them during their lifetime and that one in 3 young people aged 18 to 25 have a mental health disorder, while 60% of French people prefer not to talk about it. Director Lenny Grosman, himself concerned, says: “I grew up in a family environment where it was perhaps too intimate to talk about it even though I have already consulted psychologists on my own initiative for depression.“, before rejoicing to see the players take up the subject: “The footballers very quickly came up with words like depression, slump, anxiety, anxiety, harassment, which removed the fears we had at the start.“.
Produced by the companies So In Love and Booska-P, with the support of the Government Information Service as part of the Great National Cause “Let’s Talk Mental Health”, Diving heads
is part of a broader mobilization of Generation 2018already involved in the Mentalo study on the mental health of 11 to 24 year olds. Lenny Grosman hopes that his film, designed “for all generations of French” and of which he says “super touched that this film can be shown in the school domain“, will serve as a starting point in families, establishments and clubs. “We go to the doctor to treat the flu, so anxiety or depression can be treated by a mental health specialist.“, recalls the director, while Raphaël Varane now assumes to say with a smile: “I do brain training“.
In high-level sport, other players like Alvaro Morata have already told in the film I don’t know who I am the depression they experienced during their career and the way in which they coped with it, a sign that the word around mental health is gradually starting to become more open.