From: Alessandro Bertoglio
Women’s football has existed since the nineteenth century. In Switzerland in 1964 Madeleine Boll is the first footballer to be officially registered, even if only for a bureaucratic error of the Federation. In Italy the first women’s team was born in 1933.
Still, the real explosion of women’s football takes place only in the last quarter of a century. So much so that even the cinema He realizes it. Before 2000, on the big screen, of women’s football There is little or nothing. And there would also be to discuss, on the fact that the first films dedicated to women’s football are comedies … but we leave these considerations to other occasions, and concentrate on history.
We said, the comedies of the first two thousand.
The first title is inevitable: Dreaming of Beckham By Gurinder Chadha, with Nagra Parminder, an almost debutant Keira Knightley and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Awarded by the public at the Locarno Film Festival in 2002, and above all by the box office (76 million dollars in world collection) is not only the reference film for women’s football, but one of the most successful sports titles in general. The protagonist Jess Bhamra, a girl of Indian origin who lives in the suburbs of London; He has a passion for David Beckham, and he must fight to make his passion for football live, against the rigid habits and traditions of the family, who want her married and happy home woman.
Let the girls play (2018) by Julien Hallard celebrates the birth of the first women’s team in France, following a challenge organized in 1969 in Reims by the sports journalist Paul Coutard (played by Max Boublin). A successful mix of football, attempts to emancipate from sexist stereotypes and beautiful jokes.
Regine del Campo / a beautiful team by Mohamed Hamidi (available on players) sees Kad Merad to play the role of the coach of a fifth division men’s team, which following a fight is disqualified for the rest of the season. With three shifts still to be played and a point to earn to avoid relegation, the women of the country (wives, daughters, friends) will take the field.
There are many stories in which women’s football is forced to “take ahead” with the male one, inventing hybrid solutions. In Instead of a man (2006), The young Viola (Amanda Bynes) must disguise himself as a male in order to play in the school team, after the cancellation of the women’s team. Something similar happens, with more dramatic tones, even in Gracie (my biggest dream) by Davis Guggenheim, who follows the path of the fifteen year old Gracie Bowen: his brother, the star of the local team, is killed in an accident, and against everything and everyone decides to take his place on the team.
On the documentary front, it is absolutely necessary to mention the amazing Copa 71by Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine. One of the greatest “forgotten” sporting events of history is in fact the first women’s world, played in Mexico between August and September 1971, complete with a final at the Atzeca stadium in front of 100 thousand spectators. It was the first female world championship, unofficial, made with all the trappings of the male tournament played the previous year: sponsors, TV broadcasts, merchandising … yet the players did not get almost any notoriety. The film, through archive materials and interviews with the players of the time, tries to make them justice, as a pioneer of a popular and widespread movement, which, however, only in 1991 he met the honor of the first real official world cup under the aegis of Fifa.
Among the numerous other proposals, a vision deserves Home Games by Alisa Kovaalenko (on Netflix), in which the story of Alina Shilova, 20 years old, considered a sort of Ukrainian Maradona, is told. Alina plays in the women’s team of a suburb of Kiev and given her qualities and grit, enters the turn of the Gialloblù national team. But the sudden death of the mother obliges Alina to take care of the two brothers, staggering between the daily life of family life and her sports hopes.
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