Midway through "The Rivals," a world-class documentary about the budding high-school football rivalry between blue-collar Rumford and white-collar Cape Elizabeth, the camera lingers on three girls from Rumford's Mountain Valley High School carrying a large, homemade banner.

"Some people think football is a matter of life & death," the sign reads. "But it's more serious than that."

Indeed.

"I've just become a Cape Elizabeth fan," Jeff Garneau said Saturday morning, adding with a laugh, "I never thought that would be possible."

Garneau's son, Danny, should be the starting center for the Mountain Valley Falcons this fall. Instead, the 16-year-old junior is flat on his back at Maine Medical Center in Portland, undergoing chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia.

It's a parent's worst nightmare – as Jeff and Kim Garneau will readily attest. But it's also taught the Garneaus a lesson not just about their own hometown of Rumford, but also about that faraway place (in more ways than one) called Cape Elizabeth.

"When it comes down to children, to boys and girls, it's all the same," Jeff Garneau said. "When the day is over, we're all from Maine."

Here's how he knows.

The story dates back to 2006. Undefeated Cape Elizabeth, with just two years of Class B football under its belt, traveled to undefeated Rumford that fall to take on perennial powerhouse Mountain Valley in the last game of the regular season – and almost beat them.

Kirk Wolfinger, owner of the Lone Wolf Documentary Group in South Portland and the father of a Cape Elizabeth player, had brought his camera along figuring he might get some footage for Cape's end-of-the-year football banquet.

"I was a dad with a camera making a home movie," Wolfinger recalled. "Then a real movie happened."

Wolfinger, whose production company's portfolio includes work for The History Channel, "Nova" and The National Geographic Channel to name but a few, knew instantly that what he witnessed through his lens was about a lot more than football.

It was about economic opportunity (or the lack thereof). It was about social stereotypes. It was about values. And, perhaps most of all, it was about the heavy expectations that communities sometimes place on their children's padded shoulders.

So inspired was Wolfinger by the electricity of the 2006 game that he approached the two coaches – veteran Jim Aylward of Mountain Valley and upstart Aaron Filieo of Cape Elizabeth – seeking access to them and their players for a full-fledged documentary that would chronicle their 2007 seasons. Both agreed.

The result is a film that must be seen to be fully appreciated. The Smithsonian Channel, which bought the rights from Wolfinger for $135,00 (he spent $165,000 producing the film), plans to air "The Rivals" in the fall of 2010.

From revealing interviews with players at home in their bedrooms to Cape Elizabeth's climactic regular-season victory over Mountain Valley that October; from Cape Elizabeth's genteel fundraiser at the oceanfront home of a football booster to Mountain Valley's traditional pre-game spaghetti dinners prepared by parent volunteers; from introspective reflections by the two coaches to their now legendary on-field confrontation after Cape's post-game celebration delayed the traditional team handshake; the film is an often painfully honest portrayal not just of two football teams, but of the communities that produced them.

Wolfinger debuted the film this summer at the Maine International Film Festival in Waterville – it got a standing ovation from an audience filled with parents and players from both Rumford and Cape Elizabeth.

Then, as a gesture of appreciation to the two towns, Wolfinger agreed this month to screen it at both high schools – it played on Aug. 14 in Rumford and on Thursday in Cape Elizabeth. Legal constraints prevented paid...