Just in time for the kick-off for the Women’s World Cup in France 2019, Marwa Zein presents her impressive and unusual debut documentary about the Sudanese women’s football team. The film is driven by strong protagonists who defy patriarchal society, Islamic dogmatism and economic crisis to train in shorts and baseball caps on a dusty field in a Khartoum suburb. Quite literally in a ›playful‹ way, Zein succeeds in breaking down stereotypical clichés and showing the absurdity of gender roles in a manner that Western audiences could also learn something from. Interestingly, the boldest scene is simultaneously the most poetic, lifting the film out of the predefined framework of a documentary: In a montage of close-ups, a female and a male body meld into an abstract, sensual landscape – gender segregation, one of the backward dogmas of a country that has been under Islamic sharia law since the late 1980s, is softened in a painterly way. The courage shown by the Saudi Arabian born film-maker in taking such a shot is equal to the courage of her football players who refuse to be intimidated by interrogations and other harassment by the government. (MZ)

In cooperation with Deutsches Fußballmusem