Female Film Critics 24/375
The Ukrainian gymnast drama Olga is timely and highly resonates in the portrayal of complicated mother-daughter relationships and female friendships overall. Director Elie Grappe has perfectly encapsulated major themes around a young Ukrainian woman whose ambition and talent have propelled her into the elite strata of European gymnasts. The 2013 Ukrainian uprising serves as the heartbeat backdrop to her journey, ending in 2020 by the final scene.
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Ten years ago, French writer/director Julien Faraut saw sixteen-millimeter footage of Japan’s 1964 Olympic volleyball team. Faraut says that their grit and determination so impressed him, he knew he had to make the film that became The Witches of the Orient, an unfortunate nickname taken from Soviet press, a title that incorrectly identifies their astonishing, admirable elite athletic talent.
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For 20 years, Mary Mazzio has been creating films that spotlight the underprivileged. A Most Beautiful Thing, a documentary film, centers on America’s first all-black High School rowing team of the gang-infested Manley High School, in Chicago, IL in the late 90s. Mazzio, an Olympic rowing athlete, has found her niche.
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This is a movie with a fascinating, eventful, weighty and important story to relay, spanning not only the minutiae of what happened to Andreea Răducan, but the Olympics’ handling of the controversy, the ins and outs of gymnastics world in general and Romanian gymnastics specifically, the pressure put on young girls in the field and the move towards younger competitors.
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The Weight of Gold examines mental health issues of Olympic athletes. The frank discussion of depression, including suicidal thoughts, applies to more than just elite athletes, because perhaps one in five Americans are affected, making this film important to large audiences
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Director Bill Gallagher’s documentary called simply Runner does indeed, truth in naming, focus on twice Olympic marathon competitor Guor Mading Maker, previously Guor Marial. But that merely identifies his adult achievement as an elite athlete whereas Guor’s first, desperate running as a child was to hide in bushes in order to save his life in his native warring Sudan.
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Fresh off her Film Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature, Booksmart director Olivia Wilde is set to helm a biopic of gold-medal gymnast Kerri Strug titled Perfect.
Read moreOlympic weightlifter Cheryl Haworth is coming to the end of her career, although she’s barely out of her teens. In
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