A documentary on female football in Azerbaijan

Sheki is a small village in northern Azerbaijian: a conservative Muslim community focused on patriarchal values, in which, to girls, almost everything is precluded. But Dreamer, the docu-film by Azerbaijani director Imam Hasanov, wants to tell a different story. In fact, his is a documentary that follows the story of Mamed, a former football player who, in Sheki, together with his wife Svetlana, founded a women's football team, with the intention of showing the local community that a girl can make of herself what she wants, and above all, that she is free to play football. He does this by knocking door-to-door, meeting the families of the village, trying to overcome the conservative paradigm of small Azerbaijani society.

One of the big problems with Mamed's venture is that Sheki's closed reality is not inclined to carry out such a project: it has no interest in local girls being able to get to play national football competitions. In Sheki, as in other areas of Azerbaijian, at 15 the girls have to get married. A forcing that even the director Hasanov had to live in his family and so, also for this reason, he wants to support the principle of Mamed, documenting his story. But due to COVID-19, Mamed's mission and filming of the documentary stopped. During the pandemic, many girls withdrew from the team, including some, precisely, in order to have to respect the family obligation to marry. The limitations and the economic crisis affected the project of Hasanov and the producer Maria Ibrahimova, who to support the work of the crew - when it is possible to resume filming - opened a foundrising on Kickstarter.com. The interruption due to the pandemic affected both projects, and now, while Mamed tries to recover by returning from the families to ask their permission to let their daughters play, Hasanov and Ibahimova are looking for new funds to start again towards Sheki and return to filming.

The goal to be achieved is 4566€, money needed to cover the costs of travel from Baku (where the production is based) to Sheki, the overnight stay, the rental of production material (such as camerames, microphones and all the necessary devices), meals and the assembly of a new trailer.