In a small Kyrgyzstan village in Central Asia, activist Gazi puts together a women’s football tournament (known as soccer in the United States) that sparks joy and healthy exercise amongst the women in Roser Corella and Stefano Obino’s observational documentary Kick-Off. Mothers, daughters and grandmothers’ daily lives and choirs are documented including sewing, teaching, picking fruit, preparing meals and having lunch together. Their joy comes from getting outside of their gender forced roles and playing football with each other. Male farmers in the field are concerned the women are leaving their choirs behind to play football and ask if they might soon be playing better than the men.
Gazi spends her time calling and negotiating with a referee for the tournament and is paying out of her own pocket, as they don’t have any sponsors. During a lunch together, one of the women wonders how they’re going to play in the tournament without proper training. Gazi brings in Aidana, a famous professional football player in both Kyrgyzstan and abroad, to give advice to the players. Aidana points out how statistically there are only 900 women playing football today in Kyrgyzstan and she’s impressed that 80 women play from this village. She recognizes how the women take care of the people in the village and have to ask for permission to play football, and how a sport is always good, “It is motion. It is life.”
While it’s clear how much playing football means to the women in the village, the observational quality can tend to feel a bit tedious, making the pacing extremely slow. Subjects aren’t introduced well, so outside of Gazi, it’s tough to become involved in the narrative of these women’s daily lives leading to the tournament because there aren’t really many subjects, outside of Gazi and Aidana, that stand out with a screen presence. In certain scenes, like one of the sewing scenes and later when they have a meal together, some of the dialogue isn’t even translated into subtitles, again making audience involvement tough. Aidana finally breathes a little life into the story with her speech to the women.
Additionally, there aren’t any scenes of football until about 27 minutes in, a third of the way into the documentary, making the first third a very slow start. In that scene, they’re apparently practicing on a field with a volleyball net, bringing up the question, why is a volleyball net on a football (soccer) field. Not much is set up or explained well. Next it cuts from the practice scene to just someone driving a car at night, showing this documentary could have used tighter editing. Even over half way through at 45 minutes, it still feels like the story is more about their daily lives then about football. The football games themselves could have been shot better as it’s tough to tell who’s winning or become involved in the games.
Despite these reservations on the quality of the filmmaking, Kick-Off could still be beneficial as an educational documentary purchase. Optional purchase.
How can Kick-Off be useful in academic screenings?
Kick-Off has many topics that could be utilized in academic screenings, including Central Asia and Kyrgyzstan culture studies, gender issues in Kyrgyzstan culture including the societal pressure women have to take care of the family, health and wellness and how sports fits into that, and finding happiness in playing a sport and how women enjoy playing football.
Kick-Off won Best Documentary at International Ethnographic Film Festival (Spain) and International Sport Film Festival (Italy), and screened at numerous other film festivals including Alexandria (Virginia), Braunschweig International (Germany), Central Scotland (United Kingdom), Human Screen (Tunisia), Thessaloniki Documentary (Greece), and What The Doc! (Thailand). So the documentary has played at some smaller festivals around the world.
Distributor EPF Media is currently having a study guide prepared which should be available on their website shortly, where they have Study Guides for many of their films. Their study guides encompass topics covered in the films, as well as useful questions for students.
What academic or public library collections could benefit from adding Kick-Off?
Kick-Off could fulfill a need to add to documentary collections that concentrate on women’s issues around the world, gender equality, and sports to aid in health and wellness. It may be more suitable for academic libraries for studies, as Kick-Off may be a little too niche for audiences outside of academics, hence a general or even indie audience.
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