Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Giannis: The Marvelous Journey’ on Prime Video, a Feature-Length Documentary About the Basketball Superstar’s Life and Career

Giannis Antetokounmpo is one of the NBA’s most exciting players–a two-time league MVP and NBA Finals MVP whose incredible athleticism and skill still startles. He’s also one of the most inspiring stories in the league’s globalization, coming from an impoverished childhood in Greece to the top of the sporting world. In Giannis: The Marvelous Journey, a new feature-length documentary streaming on Prime Video, we get a full look at Giannis’s life and career.

GIANNIS: THE MARVELOUS JOURNEY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Giannis Antetokounmpo’s rise from poverty to global superstardom is well-known. The child of Nigerian immigrants living without citizenship or work permits in Greece, his early life was a struggle to survive. He picked up basketball as a teenager, and everything changed. Giannis: The Marvelous Journey tracks this rise through emotional interviews with Giannis, his brothers, mother, and figures from throughout his incredible life.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: There are countless athlete-biography documentaries on streaming services these days, and by and large, they’re usually little more than image-burnishing infomercials. Giannis: The Marvelous Journey hits differently, and frankly, that’s because his life story is so much more dramatic and compelling than other athletes’.

Performance Worth Watching: Giannis is all about family, with brothers Thanasis, Kostas and Alex all playing professional basketball as well. Some of the most touching moments coming from his mother Veronica, talking about the difficult decision that she and her husband had to make to leave Nigeria and move to Greece, leaving behind their eldest child, Francis.

Memorable Dialogue: “People might say I’m one of the best players in the NBA right now, but I don’t see it, I don’t feel it,” Giannis says, shaking his head as he looks at the camera. “I’m just a hard worker that’s trying to survive, because I’m scared of going back. I’m scared of losing all this.” Coming from another athlete, this might seem like a bit of false humility, but coming from Giannis, you absolutely believe it.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: One of my favorite moments featuring Giannis Antetokounmpo isn’t a highlight-reel dunk, it isn’t a major accolade, it’s not a big victory. It’s a moment in 2021–right after bringing an NBA championship to Milwaukee–when he’s sitting in a Chick-Fil-A drive-through, livestreaming on social media. He’s placing his usual order for 50 chicken minis–”not 49, not 51”–and he’s just so damn nice about it that he asks the Chick-Fil-A worker if it’s okay before he puts her on camera. It’s a little thing, but it drove things home for me: Giannis is a different kind of superstar.

Watching his life story unfold in Giannis: The Marvelous Journey–a well-made, thoroughly enjoyable feature documentary–you can see how he came to be like this. His early life wasn’t easy; his parents moved from Nigeria to Greece in search of a better life, leaving their eldest child behind with grandparents. Giannis and three brothers were born in Greece, but were not eligible for Greek citizenship at birth, and the family struggled to make ends meet on the margins of a society often hostile to African immigrants and their descendents. The brothers often sold CDs, sunglasses or other items on the streets of Athens to help the family get by.

In an interview in the film, Giannis describes a revelatory moment. He’s watching the 2006 FIBA World Championship, and the Greek national team scores a stunning upset over Team USA, largely on the dominant play of Sofoklis Schortsanitis, a Greek player of Cameroonian heritage. To see someone who looked like him cheered on by his country, Giannis notes, was game-changing. “Man, he’s Black, and he’s playing for the Greek national team? Wow…”

Studying up at internet cafes, he does research on the sport, and realizes just how high the ceiling can be. “I saw Kobe Bryant, I google ‘how much does Kobe Bryant make’, and at the time, it was like 28, 30 million dollars… and I’m like, holy fucking shit. He’s making a living, and he’s world-wide known for playing basketball, for doing something he loves. I could take care of my family. I took it seriously, you know, it was very personal. The dream was–I have to put everything I have into this, because I might not make thirty million dollars. I might make a hundred thousand dollars. But it’s better than getting evicted for 230 Euros.”

From there, the rest is history–success with the Greek national team, selection in the first round of the 2013 NBA draft, and a run of on-court success that’s practically redefined what a big man can do on the court. Giannis: The Marvelous Journey is a lovely telling of a terrific life story, and it’s the rare athlete-focused bio-doc that should have appeal not just for sports fans, but for anyone.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Athlete biography documentaries often fall flat, but they don’t often have a story as compelling as that of Giannis Antetokounmpo. Giannis: The Marvelous Journey does a great job of telling that story, and even non-basketball fans can appreciate it.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.