How Roger Federer changed his mind over blockbuster Amazon documentary

It is the most talked-about tennis film of the year, yet Roger Federer’s compelling documentary Twelve Final Days was never meant to be seen by a global audience.

Originally conceived as a home video for Federer and his family to retain memories of his final days as a tennis player, the documentary became something very different soon after filming began.

As co-director Joe Sabia explains in an exclusive interview with Tennis365, what started as a small-scale production quickly became a blockbuster that has attracted huge ratings on Amazon Prime since its launch last week.

The film captures the tennis star at his most vulnerable and candid self as he says goodbye to a game and the fans that have shaped his life for the last two decades.

Featuring exclusive interviews with the people closest to Federer and a rare interview with his wife Mirka, Twelve Final Days looks back at the final moments of a glorious tennis career that came to an end with an emotional farewell for Federer at the 2022 Laver Cup in London.

Here, in the first part of an exclusive interview with Tennis365, Twelve Final Days co-director Sabia gives us the inside story of how a very personal project became a global success.

How did Twleve Final Days become a reality?

JS: The whole thing was kind of a surprise. It really wasn’t meant to be a film. At least a film for public consumption, for the audience and fans to see.
I am sitting here at the premiere and being moved around to speak to different people about the film and I have to remind myself that the whole thing is a shock. It’s a glitch in the matrix that this is all happening.

This started out as just home videos for Roger and his family. That was what we were originally hired to do. That was the only way he would allow for cameras to come into his home, to have his kids on camera and for his wife Mirka to do an interview. She hasn’t given an interview in 20 years.

Inside story on Roger Federer’s retirement announcement from one of the few people in the room

Wimbledon: The 9 greatest men’s singles champions – ranked!

How did you get to know Federer?

JS: I have known Roger for some time. In 2019, I did this interview series called 73 Questions with him. That’s why they suggested I would be the one who could be trusted to do this three years later. That’s how it all started.

I got flown out on three days’ notice with all my camera gear and the camera guy who worked with me in the 73 Questions shoot and we had a local sound guy. So everything you see in the film that is not the Laver Cup film footage is just three guys putting it all together.

So this was all pretty much unplanned?

JS: Absolutely. We were just flying by the seat of our pants and seeing where it took us. We had no preparation, we didn’t know what was going to be in front of us and just did our best not to screw up.

Halfway through this, we realised this footage and material was so good and how was Roger going to not let his fans and the world see this? So I did not start this as a documentarian, but at the end of the 12 days, I started to think what if this wasn’t an 8-10 minute film just for Roger and his family and what if this was a feature-length film?

How did you convince Federer and his team to allow this to become more than a home movie?

JS: When we were done filming, instead of putting together an 8-10 minute film on a one-week turnaround, I asked for more time. I said, trust me you are going to be happy that I’m getting more time. So we put together a 63-minute edit, crossed our fingers and waited for the response.

His agent Tony flew out with his wife Mirka and Roger and I asked if we could be on zoom to see them watching the film we had sent to them to see their reaction. He saw it and gave it the best compliment.

They got emotional a little bit and he said if this thing leaked tomorrow, I wouldn’t care. That’s when I said okay, he has given us the free light. This is when we got on to Amazon and we said we would love to get Oscar-winning director Asif Kapadia to join. That’s kind of how it all happened.

So would you say you persuaded him to release this to the world?

JS: I mean, I definitely encouraged him to say you got to do. I mean, look at this as a film. This is so captivating but it didn’t take no there was no resistance to that though. And that’s just from him but from Mirka from his team. It just felt like everyone knew the inevitability that this needed to see the light of day this needed to be appreciated by people.

Roger Federer: Twelve Final Days is available on Amazon Prime now.