‘More athletes should do films!’ Savanah Leaf, the volleyball Olympian turned Ken Loach-style director

‘I didn’t realise, growing up, that the films I loved were written and directed by black women’ … Leaf, who is following in their footsteps with Earth Mama. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

There is impressive, there is spectacular and there is Savanah Leaf – not yet 30 and already accumulating giddying lifetime achievements. At the age of 18, she played volleyball for Team GB at the 2012 Olympics. Then came a psychology degree. After that she returned to volleyball, turning pro and touring Turkey and Puerto Rico. Then, in 2015, an injury put her out of action for 18 months. “My whole world shifted,” she said. “I had to figure out what I was going to do next.”

Leaf signed up to a course in music video production and by 2020 had been Grammy-nominated, for a promo she directed for blues guitarist Gary Clark Jr. Now she has made her feature film debut with Earth Mama, a heartbreaking drama about Gia, a young, pregnant black woman in San Francisco fighting to get her two children out of foster care and agonising over whether to put her unborn baby up for adoption.