Soccer Nuns

Soccer Nuns follows the Snow Lionesses, Tibet’s women’s football team of 27 young refugees living in exile across India. As the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup kicks off, they push through a month-long training camp and fight for a place on a fledgling national squad, chasing international recognition against Chinese opposition, entrenched sexism and resistance from FIFA itself. Through stories of escape from Tibet, family tragedy and resilience, football and sisterhood become powerful vehicles in the struggle for Tibetan identity and gender equality.

A documentary this intimate lives or dies on its sound. The recordings came straight from the field, a training camp in Uttarakhand and voices carrying stories of escape, loss and hope, and they had to feel immediate and human while holding together as one gripping listen. The challenge was to shape that raw material into a soundscape that puts the listener on the pitch and inside the lives of the Snow Lionesses.

Soccer Nuns went on to win a Human Rights Press Award, recognition for both its journalism and its craft. For us it is proof that considered sound design can turn a story of courage into something audiences feel as much as hear.