On the occasion of the presentation at the Sudestival – the cinema that speaks to youwe met the co-directors of Las Leonas, Isabel Achaval And Chiara Bondì.
The film tells the not easy but surprising life of Lionesses who play in a Roman 8-a-side football team, women from Rome who work as carers, housekeepers, dog sitters, 30-45 year old immigrants mainly from Peru and Paraguay. They are told with proud humanity and are framed without rhetoric: ties with home and distant children, hopes, pains, sport as an outlet that is not an end in itself in a multi-ethnic but still stratified city. The documentary, linear and very empathetic, is the result of an almost entirely female work that is enhanced by the production of Nanni Moretti.
The idea was not to make a sports film, but to tell the life of these women who had a great passion for football, yet had a life inside which it was interesting to look at. “We were interested in recounting this contrast between the claustrophobia of everyday life and Sunday instead. The narrow space of the house within which their work takes place in relation to the space of the football field which is an open space, almost a metaphor, in which football becomes an aggregator but also a redemption. Playing football is more than just winning, it becomes a time to make friends and build community.”
Here, the complete interview.