Tribeca 2024: ‘Federer Twelve Final Days’ is controversy-free, classy tribute, just like the sport legend

Federer: Twelve Final Days doesn’t contain any shocking twists and turns. Just like the tennis gentleman, it’s a pretty easygoing affair. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, watching the Amazon Prime documentary is likely a comforting treat for his fans. The sport of tennis will likely not see his very kind again, at least not for a very long time.

Why is it Roger Federer remains so beloved and popular? It’s that rare combination of thrilling grace that elevated the way the game was played, the humility with which he comported himself, a modern athleticism that paved the way for tennis advancement while at the same paying homage to past legends. Federer has always been a class act and a gracious gentleman, which has been hypnotic to not just tennis fans, but sports fans, and frankly, the populace at large. Federer personifies the best in humanity.

He’s a class act, and the documentary about the last days of his retirement in 2022—officially conducted at the Laver Cup that year—doesn’t stray from that image. Because at the end of the day, it’s not really an image, it’s who Federer truly is. Even at the world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival, when the Swiss icon arrived, it was as if a rock star had entered the red carpet. There were kids lined with fan tennis balls to sign and as soon as he got out of his car at the red carpet event, he went over to them, signed some items and took plenty of selfies.

Even without any gotcha moments in Federer: Twelve Final Days, there are fascinating details that stood out in the Prime documentary for me, helmed originally by Vogue’s Joe Sabia, and ultimately directed by Academy-Award-winning Asif Kapadia (Diego Maradona).

Mirka, his ‘rock’

First, there’s the interview with his wife and long-time partner, Mirka Federer. She hasn’t been interviewed publicly for 18 years and probably provides the most revelatory insight into their working partnership. Her tears flow when she reads his retirement speech, but it’s in the final moment of the documentary that we get the most surprising tidbit, in my opinion. Mirka is interviewed and her admiration for Roger, the deep love and respect between the two and the sadness of saying goodbye to the sport that brought them together (they met at the 2000 Olympics). You can also sense the difficulty of many heartbreaking losses as well in that final interview.

"I'm just so happy to live with [Federer] and be with him," Mirka says during that interview. "So yeah, I'm gonna always be there for him, and yeah, so excited that I found him in my life.”

Closure about Novak Djokovic

Federer also touches on his unique rivalries with Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray. His rivalry with Murray had some memorable moments that mostly played out on the Wimbledon courts, resulting in a captivating backdrop in 2012, where the Swiss won the major but the Great Scot avenged his loss by collecting his first of two Olympics Golds later that summer. The rivalry with Nadal went from fierce competition to one that transcended the sport they competed in and became something much more meaningful for tennis, culminating in a popular nickname, Fedal.

But it’s his rivalry with Serbian tennis legend, Novak Djokovic, that has perhaps been the most complex and difficult to define. Perhaps at one point, it didn’t seem as if they two liked each other very much. Or maybe that’s not quite it, it’s more like their rivalry never flowed into something a fanbase could wrap its head around like the Fedal movement. And this is where Federer: Twelve Final Days provides some needed context.

Whereas the ‘Fedal’ bromance has come to represent love for the sport of tennis, Djokovic’s entry onto the scene has never caught that kind of rapt attention. The Serbian star absolutely has a rabid fan base, no doubt about it, and he’s now surpassed both his greatest rivals in the tally of majors, with 24.

But as the 41-year-old Federer explains, Djokovic became the “party crasher of the Rafa-Roger fans” in Twelve Finale Days.

The 20-time major winner also talks about the early days of coming across Djokovic and admits that perhaps he didn’t always pay him the greatest respect. Federer talks about the “technical flaws” of the Serbian’s forehand and backhand. And then goes on to add, “But then he ironed those things out super well, and he became an unbelievable monster of a player.”

And it’s the later development of Djokovic’s dominance—encapsulated best in that incredible win for him over Federer in the 2019 Wimbledon final—that has cemented the Golden Age of Tennis. That triumvirate of tennis prowess has given sports fans an unparalleled bounty of tennis wealth that will take a long a time to equal, if it ever will.

And it’s clear that Father Time has healed old wounds, with Federer and Djokovic finding their own inner peace at that 2022 retirement ceremony in London, where the Swiss Maestro noted he told his younger rival some meaningful things in private.

Considering that there have been some intense arguing between the Federer and Djokovic fans over many years that have centered around this controversy, one of my great hopes from this documentary is that there may be peace between the two camps as well. The two great legends have clearly found their way to that kind of Zen, as Federer has also come to terms with his own retirement.

Federer: Twelve Final Days pays beautiful homage to a legend in the lexicon of sport. And it also offers some terrific lessons on how to make peace when you need to say goodbye to something you truly love. Federer: Twelve Finals Days is streaming on Amazon Prime and I highly recommend it.