Filmmaker Statement

Much of the film is about presentation. Amal has been trained from a young age to be a face for "feminist progress." She's often interviewed about tbourida and for being one of the first women to join the mounted police force. In every scenario, the same questions are repeated. While controversial to some, she's the most palatable representative possible: educated, upper class, nationalistic. When I started this project in 2015, the idea was to question simplistic representations of women athletes. It evolved after Amal became pregnant. Amal and I are the same age, and we’d both come to our respective passions as teenagers. By 25, we’d established ourselves in male-dominated professions and defined ourselves by our work. While I watched her start her family, I held my fears of what motherhood would mean for my career. My goal with the film became to look at how presentation and narrow self-definitions play out in regards to class, and to understand the contradictions of motherhood.