Lift Like a Girl

Production year: 2020
Country: Egypt
Director: Mayye Zayed
Producer: Mayye Zayed
Co-producers: Anke Petersen & Anna Bolster

On a busy, noisy high-traffic street corner in Alexandria, Egypt, a seemingly vacant corner lot surrounded by chain link fencing is the training site of Egypt’s most elite champions – women weightlifters.

Zebiba (Arabic for “raisin”) has been training at the site for five years, since she was nine, following in the footsteps of Egypt’s most famous athletes of all time – including the first Arab, woman, two-time Olympic medalist, Abeer Abdel Rahman, and World champion and Olympic athlete, Nahla Ramadan. Nahla’s father, the visionary Captain Ramadan, has trained champions, women champions, from his makeshift corner-lot training site for over two decades – four Olympic, nine World and 17 Pan African champions.

Now it is Zebiba’s turn. But can Zebiba put aside her youthful instincts and direct her focus to be the weightlifting champion the Captain is sure she is?