Nadia Nadim is both a force of nature and an inspiration. A woman who, after escaping Afghanistan as a young girl with her mother and sisters, became one of the world’s greatest footballers, playing for Paris Saint Germain and her adopted country of Denmark.
And after she conquered the world of football, she turned to medicine, qualifying as a reconstructive surgeon. But she longs to return home to Kabul where she grew up, if only to find and reclaim the medals of her father, an army general murdered by the Taliban.
In French filmmaker Anissa Bonnefont’s film, selected for AJB Doc International Competition, Nadia tells her life story as she prepares to revisit the city of her birth. This is very much to the dismay of friends and family who fear for her safety, given her status as a global female icon.
The project came to Bonnefont (who readily admits that she had no previous in interested in football) after it was pitched to producer Myriam Weil by writer Edith Chapin, herself a passionate advocate for women in sport. Weil thought that Bonnefont would be a great fit for the project having seen her previous documentary Wonder Boy, about French fashion designer Olivier Rousteing.
Bonnefont was interested but needed to be convinced. “I thought her [Nadia’s] story was very touching, but I needed to meet her to understand if it would work out and what would be the story I would want to tell,” she says. But she needn’t have worried. “The first time I met Nadia, I fell in love with her. I really loved her energy, and she was luminous. And I thought she was going to be a great message of hope for all the young people that have to live through exile.”
After an early rapid-fire montage that intercuts archive of a war-torn, strife-ridden Afghanistan with Nadia’s glorious exploits on the football pitch, the player tells of her early life, including the dramatic late night flight to Pakistan with her mother and sisters after the assassination of her father. She tells of how her mother sold all of her possessions to get them out of the country, and how it took her a long time to believe her father was really dead – for years Nadia was convinced she saw him around every corner. And she tells of her desire to return to Kabul, to locate and reclaim his 48 army medals, which she plans for throughout the film, just as the Taliban are renewing their stranglehold over the country…
Director Bonnefont was determined to follow Nadia in this pursuit. “That’s why we had the security team behind us. And that’s why every Friday morning we all met to understand exactly what was going on, what would be the precautions we would have to take if whatever would happen, different attacks or so. So it was very intense. And at the same time we were eager to go because it was really a big dream of hers to go back.”
The film’s visuals are dynamic – the football sequences are as exciting as the Afghanistan archive is shocking. Especially harrowing is an execution (in a football stadium) of a veiled woman who killed her husband. The execution was carried out in front of her seven children.
Bonnefont’s camera gives us bespoke access to Nadia’s professional world as Paris Saint-Germain finally win the French Championship, beating their arch rivals Lyon who had won the previous 14 championships. We also follow Nadia as she meets other Afghani refugees who have settled in France, all with a desperate tale to tell but possessing of a vivacity and a desire to celebrate via food, song and dance.
For the director, Nadia’s life is story as “a contemporary fairy tale.”
“I think that’s why I was very interested in telling her story, because I think she sets a great example for young people. In France we have this big problem with the new generation of people that came here from the Middle East that don’t feel home anywhere. Over here they don’t feel well accepted and over there it’s no longer their country. Which makes me so sad…So showing a story like that of Nadia is important today in the world we live in, to show that everything is possible,” Bonnefont concludes.
Nadia was produced by Federation Entertainment with Echo Studio, in association with France’s Canal Plus who commissioned it.
