The female soccer players who challenged the Duce
Adapted from the novel by Federica Seneghini and essays by Marco Gianiregia, Laura Curinocon, Rossana Mola, Federica Fabiani and Rita Pelusio.
Co-production: PEM Habitat Teatrali and Rara Produzione
1932. Tenth year of the fascist era. On a park bench in Milan, a group of girls throws out an idea, as a game, almost as a challenge: to play soccer. They founded the GFC (Gruppo Femminile Calcistico), the first Italian women’s soccer team that quickly gathered around it dozens of athletes. Initially, the federal bodies supported the initiative, allowing them to train but not to play in public. Furthermore, they had to use a rubber ball instead of leather, wear skirts instead of shorts, pass the ball only along the ground, and in goal, they had to let adolescent boys play. All this was to preserve their “reproductive capabilities.” Despite this, their sporting adventure stubbornly managed to last nearly a year, when, just on the eve of their first official match, the regime forced them to stop playing. Their challenge was against their time, the regime, and the dominant mentality that viewed soccer as the emblematic sport of fascist virility. Of this handful of girls, who in their own way challenged the Duce and the culture of their time, some reinvented themselves in other sports, others faded from history, while others entered a larger story, participating ten years later in the partisan struggle. Their epic is told with irony and lightness by a trio of actresses who, mixing comedy and narration, show us how, despite many years and battles, certain prejudices are hard to die and how the struggle for freedom and one’s rights also passes through sport.
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