There’s nothing that Waad Al-Kateab – the citizen-journalist turned Oscar-nominated director of For Sama – needs to do to make her latest documentary more affecting. The resilience and strength of character of the athletes she films competing for the Refugee Team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics reaches for your heart and gives it a good twist. The team was first introduced at the Rio Games in 2016 in response to the refugee crisis and gives athletes a scholarship to pay for living costs and training – as well as a flag to compete under.
And what a team they are. Kimia Alizadeh Zonoozi was 18 when she became Iran’s first female summer Olympic medallist, winning a bronze in Taekwondo at Rio. But she couldn’t bear to keep parroting the propaganda she was ordered to spew by the state: that men and women are equal in Iran, that black is white. She now lives in Germany. Unbelievably, her first opponent in Tokyo is her best friend and former teammate, Iran’s Nahid Kiani Chandeh.
