Tag: Female Footballers
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Sorry JD Vance, but ‘SheBelongs’ on the pitch (2024)
A link to the free showing of the movie #SheBelongs showed up in my google alerts. I wasn’t sure it would be worth watching because the film had no IMDB or TMDB or Letterboxd entries. It had no reviews. I found press releases about the film and its organizers, Refugee Soccer, and it appeared to…
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‘Copa 71’ (2023) preserves the history we did not know
A benefit of having Serena Williams as an executive on your movie is that your film gets a lot of attention, and in this case, a lot of movie reviews. The reviews for Copa 71 are all quite glowing, and I certainly agree this sports documentary is important for showing a piece of female football…
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Football builds community in ‘Las Leonas’ (2022)
Las Leonas is an 8v8 tournament in Rome, where 6 recreational-level womens teams give their all on a small soccer pitch. They are almost all immigrants in Italy, and are mostly from South America. These women in the 30s and 40s play football on their only day off in the week. It gives them community…
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‘#SeAcabó’ (2024) is a diary of champions
Whether you remember this Netflix documentary as #SeAcabó: Diario de las campeonas or as the English title It’s All Over: The kiss that changed Spanish football, you should remember one thing. These women rose as one above president Luis Rubiales of the Spanish Federation and his underlings. And if you want to see how the…
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‘Untold: Hope Solo vs US Soccer’ (2024) or Hope Solo vs Herself?
In many ways, Hope Solo is a duplicate of the Tonya Harding story. Both athletes were products of the non-conformist Pacific Northwest, had a non-nurturing home life, were fatherless, and struggled economically. Both were determined not to be defined by their circumstances, but to rise above them and become champions. Of course, the reason you…
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A captivating tale of a youth tournament in ‘Kids Cup’ (‘Bortebane’ 2021)
The documentary Kids Cup (original title is Bortebane) follows 5 young footballers, ages 13-14, as they prepare for, compete, win, and lose in a huge international youth tournament known as the Norway Cup. If you’ve ever played in or taken your child to a travel tournament, as we call it in the USA, you and…
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Review: ‘Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team’ (2023)
Under Pressure: The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team is a 4 episode series produced by Netflix. It follows several players as they agonize about making the USWNT roster for WWC 2023. Only 23 women can be selected. And after they’ve made the team, as any USSoccer fan now knows, that team turns in the worst…
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Review: ‘The Ladies with Style’ – ‘Banyana ba Style’ (2022)
The Ladies with Style (Banyana ba Style) was showcased at the BrandStorytelling 2024 event in Utah, which ran in parallel to Sundance. The event honored this film from first-time Director Caroline Brouckaert, because it so effectively melded entertainment, impact, and purpose, and because it was their first selection to get distributed by a major platform…
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A perfect 10 – ‘Lionesses: How Football Came Home’ (2022)
When a football documentary is really great, it makes you root for and admire the players even though they are normally your opponents. As a long time USWNT fan since WWC 1999, I thought I would watch this docu and maybe learn a few things about England’s WNT, also known as the Lionesses. Instead, I…
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Female footballers in a story that is ‘Forever’ (2023)
The Swedish film Forever is the most authentic soccer movie drama I have seen. It should appeal to female footballers everywhere, as a realistic story they have experienced in some form directly or indirectly. The producers were looking for new ways to portray football on the screen, and they scouted all of Vastra Götaland to…
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Steve Zahn is perfect in ‘Gringa’ (2023)
First of all, spoiler alert — nothing terrible happens in Gringa. I had hesitated to watch this movie because I thought it was going to be a depressing trope about failed lives and relationships. But instead, Gringa is about second chances — the chances we give ourselves to recover, and the chances we give others…
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Note: Where to find Womens World Cup coverage
Update on Aug-21-2023: Well, it’s all over. The greatest World Cup we have yet seen. So much drama, such fan enthusiasm, the incredible FRA vs AUS 20-player shootout. So many suprises. You never knew who was going to win. Never.
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‘Ella, a Modern Day Fairytale’ (2023)
On a mission to promote womens football ahead of next month’s WWC 2023, England Football and Disney put together a 4-min animation called Ella, a Modern Day Fairytale. Narrated by England WNT star Alex Scott, it is a Cinderella story where, instead of going to a royal Ball, little Ella tries out for the local boys…
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‘Equal Playing Field’ from the top down (2021)
Sometimes to get people to pay attention to your message, you have to do something radical. Like have 30 women climb Kilimanjaro and play an official soccer match at an altitude of 18,800 feet.
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The business side of womens football – ‘Angel City’ (2023)
Truth be told, I watched the 3-part Angel City docuseries a couple of weeks ago, but I just couldn’t get myself to write this review. The series shows a lot about Angel City FC that I hadn’t known, and I was glad to learn it. But the coverage of the startup and inaugural year of…
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‘A Winning Team’ (2023) is all about love
The Hallmark Channel produces as many as 100 films in a year, and A Winning Team may be its first soccer movie. Like most Hallmark films, it’s also about how love of family plus a little romance pull the lead lady footballer back to a real life.
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‘Khartoum Offside’ (2019) intimate but confusing
Khartoum Offside is Writer-Director Marwa Zein’s first feature length film and has won a number of awards. I just don’t know enough about the film industry to understand why.
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Times have changed since ‘Pretty Tough’ (2011)
Pretty Tough sat in my Amazon watchlist for a long time, because it looked like one of those low quality movies that was either exploitative of teen girls or from the Christian network. So I was surprised when I found Pretty Tough to be pretty good, and neither exploitative nor religious.
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Know your history – The Sisters of ’96 (2021)
The Sisters of ’96 highlights an accomplishment that seems to barely register in American soccer history. While the 99ers are now easily recognized as the winners of the WWC 1999, how many know that prior to that, these women won the gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta?
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Will ‘Truth be Told’ (2022) set the NWSL free?
Truth be Told: The fight for Women’s Professional Soccer is an ESPN E60 production. The film covers the more visual aspects of the “This guy has a pattern” story that was reported by Meg Linehan and Katie Strang. On Sep-30-2021, the reporters broke open their investigation on abuses by celebrated coach Paul Riley and the…
