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Reggae Girlz documentary project

Ranked last at 51 in the world, the Reggae Girlz qualify for their first Women’s World Cup

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About

Reggae Girlz Journey to the Women's World Cup 2019 is a cinema verité documentary capturing the Jamaican Women National Football Team's historic qualification to the World Cup; a first Caribbean women's soccer team to ever compete on the world stage. We were invited to embed with the team in the most intimate and profound way possible, as filmmakers. We were given carte blanche to literally travel with the team, stay with the team, film every moment of the team’s lives from qualification until the last meeting of the World Cup in France. The story is about the challenges in gaining admission to the dream venue to compete at the highest level without any of the resources or true financial support to get there. The coaches were working for free for five years, the players did not get paid and had to leave their jobs or school to attend any friendly games etc. The players were scattered around the world as Jamaican diaspora so did not gain much practice time together before they were expected to compete with some of the best teams in the world. Their federation at the time was dominated by chauvinistic male leadership who did not care about the women’s game in Jamaica. It was considered a sport for men only and they allowed the women’s team to disband six years before the women’ were playing in the World Cup, due to “financial priorities” and focused on the men’s team only. The team was resurrected by Cedella Marley, eldest daughter of Bob Marley who used her personal finances to bring the team back to life and support them through to the World Cup with fundraisers, songs created for them by the family and fundraising events that begged the local business community to join up and sponsor them. The coaches and players are the main characters of the story, and the structure is literally the story of triumph over obstacle after obstacle in order to play at the World Cup after qualifying.