Zanzibar Soccer Queens, a documentary by Florence Ayisi, celebrates the passions and bravery of ‘Women Fighter’, a women’s soccer team in Zanzibar, Tanzania.The film weaves individual histories of team members, the teamwork between them, the unfriendly eyes of Muslim society toward the female soccer team, lacking facilities in the country, through colors, rhythms and images from the exotic African sceneries. In a Muslim society where women are supposed to cover their bodies, these bare-footed players run across cultural boundaries that restrict gender the way they run across the playing field, with the freedom to control their own bodies, despite the male gaze that disapproves. They just want to run on the ground and to be different from the way they are regarded. Ayisi captures African women’s own reality, passion for life, and daily experiences beyond the extent of mainstream media’s representation of Africa as a land of war, poverty, disease, or a primitive mother nature, and shows her will to write the ‘herstory’ of their own courageous lives and realities. These women, including the filmmaker, absolutely deserve our praise and admiration. (KIM Eun-shil)