DREAM PITCH: WOMEN SHOOT FOR THE WORLD (CUP)
Director Marwa Zein was twice detained while making ‘Khartoum Offside’ but tells Kaleem Aftab she wants to film in the country again soon
Growing up, Sudan was a place of mystery for Marwa Zein. While her father is Sudanese and her mother Egyptian, the filmmaker was born in Saudi Arabia in 1985. The family moved to Egypt when she was eight. “In Cairo, I discovered cinema for the first time because there was no cinema in Saudi Arabia,” recalls Zein. “I felt liberated while watching movies.”
She wanted to study film, but her conservative father was against it. Refusing to be thwarted, Zein showed the sort of passion and stubbornness that would come in handy when she made Khartoum Offside. The documentary, which premiered this year, tells the story of female footballers whose dream it is to play for Sudan at a Women’s World Cup hosted by their home country. “I enrolled in a chemical engineering course for three years and then I worked so hard to have some money to pay for cinema studies,” she says. “I went behind my parents’ back for the first year, but in the second year they found out.”
At 24, Zein visited Sudan for the first time. “I’d always been trying to go, but it never worked out. Then in 2010, an Egyptian television channel was looking for someone to cover the separation of Sudan,” she says, referring to the secession of South Sudan, which was formalised after a
referendum in January 2011. “No one wanted to go because they were afraid the country was dangerous and disease-ridden. Although I didn’t know anything about being a television correspondent, I was given the job.”
Before South Sudan gained independence, Sudan was the largest country in Africa. Once bordering nine countries, it was more than a quarter of the size of the US. Sudan gained independence from the UK and Egypt in 1956 and is home to a variety of cultures, religions and ethnicities, including those of the sub-Sahara region and those from the Arab world.
Her time there was an eye-opening experience for the fledgling reporter. “It was a really tragic and extreme experience. I met amazing people who didn’t believe in the separation and people who had bitter experiences of the civil war and racism.”
Zein, now 33, says she felt an affinity with the country. “It allowed me to build up a realistic picture of Sudan and not the dreamy experience created by a diaspora who have never been there,” she says.
It was not long before she returned. “In October 2014, I was asked if I’d like to make a five-minute documentary about the women’s football team in Sudan,” she says.
Zein was immediately enamoured with the footballers, although the filmmaker says she found it difficult to try to tell their story in only five minutes. She was supposed to spend a week there, but stayed for three months before deciding to make a feature film revolving around the lives of the women.
“I felt like they could represent my inner soul in an indirect way,” she says. “They are courageous and despite all the obstacles put in their way to stop them from playing football, they don’t stop fighting for what they believe in and they are open-minded.”