31/08/2023 - VENICE 2023: Queer athletes take over an Olympic stadium, ready to change the game, in the German director’s first feature-length documentary

In Life Is Not a Competition, but I’m Winning [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Julia Fuhr Mann
film profile], screening in the International Film Critics’ Week at Venice, German director Julia Fuhr Mann talks about injustice in sport, but her protagonists never ask for sympathy. The likes of trans runner Amanda Reiter or Annet Negesa – forced to undergo irreversible surgery – share their stories and celebrate past pioneers while also, hopefully, inspiring future fighters. Ready, set, go!

Cineuropa: To so many athletes, the Olympic stadium is the ultimate destination, but it also comes with a lot of problematic baggage. Why did you want to reclaim this space?
Julia Fuhr Mann: I watch sports all the time. I am really into it, but there are so many things that keep annoying me. It’s just so… binary. My work revolves around queer feminist topics, and the fact that I watch sports all day doesn’t really fit in with that. Still, I wanted to embrace that pathos and put marginalised people in the middle of it, “appropriating” all these big gestures.

You show a lot of injustice here and recall a lot of enraging moments. How did you select these stories?
I didn’t know about some of them, and I really know a lot about sports. It was one more reason to do this. I was surprised about the way they used to film Stella Walsh [a Polish-born Olympic athlete, later discovered to be intersex], for example. They would do all these close-ups of her hands and frame her body differently.

There is an existing TV documentary about Annet Negesa, but I wanted to show her story in a different way. It was her idea to introduce this slow-motion sequence as a metaphor for what really happened to her [told her testosterone levels were too high, she was advised to have a gonadectomy, which ended her career]. With Amanda, the trans woman from Bavaria, I was simply fascinated by how she manages to live in that small village and keep on doing her thing. I liked that the film starts with archival footage of Lina Radke [the first Olympic champion in the women’s 800 metres], when another runner’s collapse overshadowed her success, and then Amanda talks about men collapsing while trying to overtake her.

You don’t have any “talking heads” in the film. Instead, you have running heads – they are always moving, always chasing that next goal. Would you say that things have changed for queer athletes?
The media coverage is getting bigger, and so many people watch the Women’s World Cup, but these organisations are still run by men. Maybe this will also change in the future. So many documentaries focus on pain, and for me, it would feel very weird to do that as well. I don’t want to bring people down or to make them cry again. That’s why we combine existing footage with some fictional moments. I wanted to show they are ready to start something new. And they want others to join them.

It's obvious that you love sports because you show it can lead to very concrete change – even just by mentioning US sprinter Wilma Rudolph’s decision not to attend her homecoming parade if it remains segregated.
Sport is fascinating because there is so much pain and work that goes with it, and then you just have this one shot. I love that it evokes all these emotions; I love the singing and the crying. At the same time, whenever I would watch games with my friends, we would look up which players were gay. We listen when Megan Rapinoe makes political speeches. I really pay attention to queer women in sports who decide to use their platform, because so many of their male colleagues say nothing. When the whole world is watching, these statements and political gestures mean so much.

It's really not about competing any more, at least not in this film. It’s about a community.
I didn’t want to focus on someone’s win; I wanted to focus on people being together. Resisting together, rather than accepting existing rules, because then, things just don’t change. When we were working, I could tell they all felt so connected. With Annet, it was nice to also hang out in a queer bar in Berlin afterwards because it was never about this one film. It was important to bring them together and allow them to share the things they have experienced.