FIFA film edits out horror show of lastest scandal

TALK ABOUT terrible timing: The film that describes the history of the Federation International de Football Association in gloriously heroic terms is set to premiere in the United States on Friday — just days after FIFA president Sepp Blatter announced his resignation amidst a corruption scandal.

Releasing “United Passions” a week after Attorney General Loretta Lynch and other Justice Department officials unsealed a 47-count indictment in Brooklyn that says soccer officials accepted more than $150 million in bribes is a little like releasing a movie celebrating the Titanic a week after it collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

The film, which received 90% of its funding from FIFA, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 2014 but will make its debut in U.S. theaters, including the Cinema Village on E. 12th St. in Manhattan, on Friday.

“United Passions” describes how three men — Jules Rimet, FIFA’s president from 1921 to 1954, Joao Havelange, the president from 1974 to 1998, and Blatter — nurtured a soccer federation that fostered international good will as it spread their love of the beautiful game across the globe.

In the wake of the indictment and Blatter’s sudden resignation — just four days after he was re-elected as FIFA’s president — the story sounds downright laughable, like the captain of the Titanic saying that he hit the iceberg because passengers needed ice for their martinis.

“United Passions” star Tim Roth and director Frederic Auburtin sound embarrassed by their ties to the film.

“I was like, ‘Where’s all the corruption in the script? Where is all the back-stabbing, the deals?’ ” Roth said in an interview with the Sunday Times of London last year.

“I didn’t have the freedom to do a Michael Moore movie at all,” Auburtin told The New York Times this week. “If I started the movie with flashlights and sirens coming to Zurich, like what happened last Wednesday — I knew if we would write any line like this, everyone would say: ‘What are you doing, man? Come on.’ ”

There is one deliciously honest moment in the trailer: “The whole machine’s going to blow up,” the Blatter character says. “And me with it.”