Director's Statement

I’ve wanted to be a film director all my life. Since I was a little girl, I was swept up in the magic of cinema. It was my window to diverse cultures – a thread that connects humanity.

Representation is essential. While cinema nurtured me, it became clear I couldn’t have a future as a film director - I didn’t have a lot of female heroes to look up to, which instilled a strong sense of doubt that this dream was possible.

After a decade of working in other parts of the industry, tragedy enveloped my family – my beautiful mom Jayne was diagnosed with cancer. I moved home to spend the next year as her caregiver. Watching her suffer and eventually take her last breath changed me forever.

Reminded of the preciousness of time, I was instilled with the courage to finally chase the dream I’ve had in my soul since I could walk. Committed to the intersection of art and impact, Radiant J. Productions was born - the “J” stands for my mama, always guiding the way.

Turning pain into power, Equal Playing Field was the perfect first feature. It explores everything I’m passionate about: social equity, love, inclusion, unity, resilience, environmentalism.

I know my story is not unique – all artists have hardship in their blood. But if I had seen this film and was inspired by these women as a little girl, when one hand was rooted on the ground while the other was still reaching towards the sky, perhaps it wouldn’t have taken me a tragedy to live my truth and fight for my dream.

These remarkable women have changed my life forever. I can’t wait for them to change yours.

Amirose Eisenbach

Co-Director and Producer, Equal Playing Field

Opportunity knocks - Including behind the scenes

One of the reasons we are taking on a world record here at Equal Playing Field is to call for an increase in sporting opportunities and access for women and girls. But access and opportunities in sport relate as much to sitting in the boardroom as they do to stepping out on the pitch. Off the pitch, women are frequently side-lined from decision-making roles in sporting bodies whether on a local or international level. We believe that diversifying boards would make for much more inclusive decisions relating to for example, how to allocate budgets; would generate better strategies for growing the game beyond existing demographics; and would ensure “equality” is paid more than just lip-service.

And so, it’s with pleasure we congratulate Women in Sport, in the UK on winning a major campaign battle. From April this year all publicly funded sports governing bodies must adhere to a minimum threshold of 30% gender diversity to receive public funding.

Nevertheless (to borrow the battle cry that Senator Jeff Sessions inadvertently created when silencing US Senator Elizabeth Warren back in February 2017) Women in Sport are persisting. Their new campaign seeks now to go “Beyond 30%”. Having found that the percentage of women on boards has stagnated at 30%, they are now focusing their attention on senior leadership roles (the percentage of which are taken by women having actually dropped since 2014) as well as establishing healthy leadership development channels from the lowest rungs to the top. Indeed, the lack of a “sustainable pipeline of female leadership talent within sport” is one of the three persistent problems that Women in Sport identified as inhibiting progress.

Sadly, of the 68 national governing bodies, the Football Association (FA) has the third lowest percentage of female non-executive directors – only worse than the Angling Trust and the British Taekwondo Council. That is not acceptable for a sport with such massive appeal to women and girls and one with such aspirations for growth.  Indeed, the FA has just launched a brand new, very welcome strategy to double the number of girls and women taking part in football by 2020 (a strategy heavily influenced by the presence of Sue Campbell in a senior FA leadership role). The FA would now do well to get more women into those leadership development channels and in a wide variety of decision-making roles as soon as possible so that they can best better understand exactly how to do just that.

Welcome to the team!

One of the first players to join our team is Zahra Mahmoodi from Afghanistan. Zahra became the captain for the National team and has played in many national and international games. She was the first female in Afghanistan to become a FIFA-licenced coach and founded the under-14 girls' national team. In her efforts to bring more attention to female sports players, she met with John Kerry and later received Muhammad Ali's humanitarian Award. 

Zahra is a fantastic inspiration to women players everywhere and we're really excited to have her on the team!