What movie lover doesn’t enjoy a good film festival? We here at Film Combat Syndicate were lucky enough to access some of the films shown at the recent North Bend Film Festival and I don’t know about my colleagues, but I chose a nice variety of films to view. I’ve already told you about Tailgate, but I also got to watch Luchadoras and Witches of the Orient.
Luchadoras, directed by Paola Calvo and Patrick Jasim, is a documentary film with a runtime of just over ninety minutes. Although it is in Spanish, there are English subtitles. So what’s it about? Here’s the official summary:
Mini Sirenita, Lady Candy, and Baby Star are female wrestlers grappling with life in Ciudad Juarez, inside and outside of the ring. The threat of violence looms over their daily lives as they navigate the struggles of motherhood, immigration, and factory work. The courage they exude in their personal lives is paralleled in the theater of wrestling, as they display athleticism and adopt personas that unmask feminist agency in a world dominated by machismo.
This was an enjoyable documentary. I loved the style as it goes back and forth between interviews with the wrestlers, to showing clips of their daily life, to footage of them in action in the ring. It’s sad to see scenes of them fighting and witness their strength, but then to hear about their struggles in life whether it be from their jobs, where they live, or the men in their life.
If you’re a wrestling fan or if you’re looking to learn more about Juarez, to really know people’s struggles, I highly recommend this film.