MARTA VUOLE GIOCARE

Marta wants to become a footballer. Her role model is Italian national-team forward Barbara Bonansea, but the first step is simply getting the chance to play. When she asks to join a match, the other children turn her away; when she talks about enrolling at a football school, she meets the same prejudice in the adults’ replies.

MARTA VUOLE GIOCARE takes shape through these concrete situations. Its young protagonist looks for a pitch, a team and time to train. The story also follows her search for a girls’ football school and her exercises with the ball: football is something she wants to do, as well as a dream she must defend against other people’s objections.

Alongside Marta’s sporting path are scenes at home. At the table she talks about being excluded; family conversations bring the question of girls playing football into the relationships closest to her. The film moves between pitch and home, the remarks of other children and the reactions of adults, without building the story around the result of a match.

The film also carries part of its theme through images: Marta appears behind the fence separating her from the pitch, while a doorway frames her mother watching a training session. Fences and thresholds become recognisable elements of the staging, alongside conversations about who is allowed to play. Marta’s relationship with her mother thus runs through the story away from the pitch too.

Giulia Coppola plays Marta; Fortunato Cerlino plays Antonio and Lucia Lorè plays Rosa. Written and directed by Matteo Quarta, the Italian short film runs for 17 minutes. Carlo Alessandri and Guido Massimo Calanca are among the producers named in the submission. The film was entered in the fifth edition of the International Sport Film Festival under its original title, MARTA VUOLE GIOCARE.