Bend It Like Beckham, breaking the bias 20 years on

We're back! To kick off Series 3 and in honour of International Women’s Day we are launching with the classic film Bend It Like Beckham (2002)! Directed by Gurinder Chadha, the film stars Parminder Nagra as Jess, Keira Knightley as Jules, Archie Panjabi as Pinky and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Joe.

Set in London, the film follows Jess as she navigates her ambitions to play professional football against her Indian Sikh cultural heritage. For ‘In The Club’ we were very lucky to speak to Kaljit Atwal, a professional football freestyler who coincidentally also travelled to America from the UK on a football scholarship!

In this episode, we discuss the nostalgia of the film, as well as its representation of Asian culture and women in mainstream media. We also examine some of the more problematic areas of the film…hindsight is 20/20 right?

Bend It Like Beckham is available to stream on Amazon Prime (UK), Apple TV and Disney+.

Next week, we’ll be discussing Red Rocket (2021) directed by Sean Baker. We’ll be chatting to the star, Simon Rex, who just won the Best Male Lead Spirit Award for his performance in the film! Red Rocket will be available to watch in UK cinemas from 11 March, 2022.

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