Film Information
Year: 2025
Duration: 77
Language: VOSE
Genre: Documentary
Synopsis
Kickoff takes us to the remote village of Kök-Tash, Kyrgyzstan, where conservative norms confine women to domestic labor. The activist Gazi Babaiarova organizes a women’s soccer tournament to challenge these patriarchal traditions, demonstrating the transformative power that sports can have. By coming together to train and compete, the women of the village discover the strength that comes from supporting each other, while developing a new sense of self-esteem and empowerment. The film illustrates how a seemingly simple game can become a powerful platform for asserting rights, challenging social pressures, and dreaming of a more just and hopeful future. It’s a documentary that introduces us to a distant world that, in its need for freedom, self-determination, and revolution, is also so close to us.
Director
Roser Corella (1978) is an independent documentary filmmaker from Barcelona, currently based in Berlin. After earning her degree in Visual Arts from the University of Barcelona (UB), she completed her studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, with Wolfgang Tillmans as the supervisor of her Photography Project, and in Cuba at the International School of Film and TV (EICTV). She began her career as a journalist for Catalan television before shifting to producing documentaries with a strong socio-ethnographic and humanistic focus. Her most notable works include Grab and Run (2017) and Room Without a View (2021), which have been presented at festivals such as CPH:DOX, Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, DMZ Docs Korea, and DocsBarcelona.
Stefano Obino is an Italian filmmaker and producer known for his documentaries focused on social issues. He studied Modern Literature at the University of Cagliari and later specialized in Dramaturgy at the Theater Academy in Milan. He started his career by collaborating with Vanguard Italia on Current TV. Since 2014, he has been based in Berlin, where he has directed several documentaries. His works include the short film Bare-Handed (2017), distributed by The Guardian, and the documentary War Is Over (2021), which premiered at the Rome Film Festival in 2021.
The documentary Kickoff (2025) had its world premiere at the Thessaloniki Doc Film Festival (TiDF) in March this year, and has since been selected for other festivals including the Women IFF, What the Doc!, Perugia Social Film Festival (PerSo), Biograf, Doku Baku, Hofer Filmtage, Braunschweig IFF, FrauenWelten Film Fest Berlin, Central Scotland Documentary Festival, Thinking Football Film Festival, Sofia MENAR Film Festival, and Bir Duino.
Casa Àsia | Seu Social 
