Fatma Al-Ghanim, Former Qatar Women’s Soccer Captain, on Her Tribeca Short About Breaking Taboos in Arab Sports: ‘I Couldn’t Avoid Dealing With This Trauma Anymore’

Watch the exclusive trailer for "Theatre of Dreams" below

By Nick Vivarelli

Nick Vivarelli

International Correspondent

Latest

• U.K. Detective Drama Series ‘Death in Benidorm,’ Brazil’s ‘Emergency 53’ to Bow at Italian Global Series Festival 2 hours ago
• Jafar Panahi’s One-Year Prison Sentence Upheld by Iranian Court 24 hours ago
• Shivani Pandya Malhotra Steps Down as Managing Director of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival (EXCLUSIVE) 2 days ago

Fatma Al-Ghanim is a Qatari athlete and filmmaker who is breaking new ground for women in the tiny country and in the Arab world at large. In 2010, she captained Qatar’s first-ever women’s national soccer team. Now, Al-Ghanim is at the Tribeca Film Festival with “Theatre of Dreams,” a powerful short that marks her directorial and acting debut and exposes the fierce cultural opposition to women playing soccer in Qatar from her personal prism.

Set against the backdrop of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and inspired by her real-life story, “Theatre of Dreams” delves into why the country’s female national soccer team — which was created in 2009 as Qatar was preparing to bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup — has been inactive since 2014 and is currently unranked in the FIFA world ranking.

Related Stories

Behind the Movie Claiming to Be the First Straight-to-VHS Release in 20 Years — And Why It's a 'Middle Finger' to AI