Screening times:
Friday, March 29, 6:30 PM - SOLD OUT
Friday, March 29, 8:40 PM - Half-capacity screening
Sunday, March 31, 6:30 PM - SOLD OUT
Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine | Documentary | England | 2023 | 90m | English, Spanish, Italian, and French with English subtitles
It is August 1971. Teams from England, Argentina, Mexico, France, Denmark, and Italy gathered in Mexico City for a watershed soccer tournament: lavish sponsorship, extensive TV coverage, merchandise on every street corner, and over 100,000 roaring fans turned the historic Azteca stadium into a cauldron of noise while a fawning media treated the players like rock stars.
This was the greatest show on earth but, despite being one of the most ground-breaking moments in soccer history, you’ve probably never heard of it. And why? Because the players were all women, and the heroic event that unfolded, had been sidelined from history — until now.
Copa 71 is the extraordinary story of an extraordinary tournament, told through the voices of those who lived it: fearless women from across the globe to whom today’s players, be they superstars like Megan Rapinoe, Lucy Bronze and Marta, or a young girl playing in her local park, owe so much.
Utilizing a mix of evocative archival footage and present day interviews with the athletes who were there, audiences will be treated to a powerful sports documentary that also offers a secret feminist history. Both infuriating and thrilling, Copa 71 reveals a moment that led to the explosion of women’s soccer around the globe, a catalyst of the 2015 Women’s World Cup final gaining TV audiences in America larger than the NBA final.
From the Directors' Statement:
"It has been an immense privilege to get to know the women whose story is being shared in the film, and to help place this tournament back in the annals of history. It is also an honour to work with a raft of contemporary players and experts in the game, who have been able to help us contextualize the enormity of the story, and ensure it has the global reach we believe it deserves." — Rachel Ramsay and James Erskine
"Copa 71 connects an entire lineage of the sport and reveals that while its popularity has been recognized more recently, it might be even greater if more of it was on the record." -Stephen Saito, Variety
"Copa 71 is a revolutionary political parable that goes beyond football. A different world is possible; not only that, a different world was not just possible but did in fact exist." -Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"Copa 71 is a film that doesn’t operate in solitude as it sits comfortably alongside uncovered, once-hidden narratives like The Battle of the Sexes and The Divine Order as examples of women fighting for their place in our patriarchal society." -Andrew F. Peirce, The Curb
Tickets $8.75 ($8 cash at the door if available).
