Mr. Auburtin and his co-writer, the novelist Jean-Paul Delfino, scrambled for a few months to develop a script that both covered a century of FIFA and balanced their art with the wishes of their FIFA overseers. “You know the FIFA,” he said. “You cannot move a finger if they do not know the whole story.”

What they came up with is a passing of the FIFA baton by three central characters: Jules Rimet, FIFA’s president from 1921 to 1954; João Havelange, its president from 1974 to 1998; and Mr. Blatter.

The movie opens with a few Europeans envisioning an international soccer association that would foster good will among nations and elevate the level of play. The villains are the British, comically resistant to any intrusion in the game they invented.

One stiff-upper-lip twit asks, “What do foreigners understand of our beautiful game?” Another says: “Negroes? Playing football? Why not women while we’re at it? That would be quite amusing, eh?”

(The movie, by the way, has not been well received in England.)

The film seeks drama in the building of a stadium in Uruguay before the first World Cup; in the creation of the World Cup trophy; in the ups and downs of executives during war and depression. Whenever Mr. Rimet, played by Mr. Depardieu, becomes discouraged, his daughter, played by Jemima West, raises his spirits with lines that echo another movie, about a woman called Scarlett, a plantation called Tara. ...

Image Sepp Blatter of FIFA, left, with Gérard Depardieu and the director Frédéric Auburtin at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Credit... Loic Venance/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“Tomorrow’s another day, Papa,” she says. “Tomorrow’s another day.”

The narrative moves on to Mr. Havelange, who attracted developing countries into the FIFA fold and recognized the potential of commercial partnerships. As portrayed by Sam Neill, Mr. Havelange is a Machiavellian figure of the first order, brusque, cunning and ambitious — though he actually receives gentle treatment, with no spelling out of his implication in a multimillion-dollar bribery scandal.