Back in March, we covered the initial announcement of a HBO Max documentary called LFG, on the U.S. women’s soccer team’s fight for equal pay. That documentary, directed by Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine (known for previous collaborations including the Emmy-winning 2013 documentary Life According to Sam on HBO and the Academy Award-winning 2012 short documentary Inocente), now has a premiere date and a streaming availability date; it will debut at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on June 17, then appear on HBO Max on June 24. Here’s more from a release:
Three months before the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, the players filed a class-action, gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation, which sets the stage for LFG. The film interweaves transcendent athletic performances, including a record-breaking World Cup victory in 2019, with the players’ ongoing pursuit for equal pay. LFG grants viewers unprecedented access to these game-changers as they meet the physical demands and pressures of being some of the world’s top athletes, while showcasing their courage, unflinching spirit and resiliency in an effort to create long-lasting social change with the biggest fight for women’s rights since Title IX.
LFG, a no-holds-barred, inside account of the U.S. women’s national team’s ongoing fight for equal pay as told by Megan Rapinoe, Jessica McDonald, Becky Sauerbrunn, Kelley O’Hara, Sam Mewis and others. An official selection of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, the documentary film is directed by Academy Award®-winners Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine, and produced by the Fines and Abby Greensfelder with Howard T. Owens and Ben Silverman serving as executive producers for Propagate Content in collaboration with CNN Films and HBOMax.
Featuring: Megan Rapinoe, Jessica McDonald, Becky Sauerbrunn, Kelley O’Hara, Christen Press, Sam Mewis, and Julie Foudy
This is going to be a notable documentary, as the USWNT’s fight for equal pay has received a lot of attention. The timing is also good, as this HBO Max debut comes just a month ahead of that team’s appearance at the 2021 Summer Olympics (if those do indeed happen as planned). While the U.S. team is the defending Women’s World Cup champions, they fell to Sweden in the 2016 Olympic quarterfinals, so this year’s Olympic tournament has some extra storylines for them. And the backstory of their battles with U.S. Soccer is an interesting part of the run-up to that. And it looks like this documentary will dive deeply into that. Here’s a teaser trailer HBO put out in March:
We’ll see how the final product turns out here, but this is certainly an interesting documentary concept, and one that should draw a fair bit of attention.
