Director Mayye Zayed Explores the Lives of Egypt’s Young Female Weightlifters in “Lift Like A Girl”

The moment Mayye Zayed visited the makeshift weightlifting gym in her hometown of Alexandria, Egypt, she knew that she wanted to make a documentary about the gym’s eccentric founder and the girls who trained there in the hopes of becoming champions.

“I just fell in love with the place,” Zayed told the FBomb of the training center, which is housed on an empty lot near Alexandria’s harbor. “It's a place where you basically can't hear someone who is standing right next to you, yet these girls are training and are focusing — and they have to focus — on doing their best.”

Zayed’s documentary, Lift Like a Girl, is set to make its U.S. premiere at the DOC NYC film festival on November 11. The film ultimately took four years to make as she worked to build the trust of the young weightlifters, their families, and the gym’s head coach, who is known to all as Captain Ramadan. Viewers soon learn that Captain Ramadan takes pride in the fact that two of his daughters are world-class weightlifters and that he truly believes that any girl can become a great athlete.

The FBomb had the chance to video chat with Zayed from Cairo about her debut documentary, the importance of trust and collaboration, and how sports can transform girls’ lives.

One of the most striking things about this film is how progressive Captain Ramadan is in terms of girls’ and women’s rights. Was he like that all of the time?

He really was like that all of the time. I think he was one of the most feminist men I've ever seen in Egypt. Whenever he’d see a parent passing by with a kid, he’d stop them to talk about women's rights and sports.

There’s a moment you see in the film where the whole team is heading to the bus to go to the championships in another city in Egypt, and there is this little girl with her mother in the street. He called her over and said, ‘You see all these girls, they are weightlifters. Don't you want to be in the national team?’ And he got her attention immediately and he started talking to her mother, and saying ‘Bring her to the gym, she can come and join us.’ So he was always telling parents what he truly believes in.

What made you decide to focus on aspiring weightlifters for your first documentary?

When Nahla Ramadan, Captain Ramadan’s daughter, won the gold medal [at the world junior weightlifting Grand Prix championship] back in 2003 when I was a teen, it was really a very big thing in Egypt. Afterwards, during every Olympics, she was often one of the very few Egyptian athletes competing there, so the whole nation was cheering for her. She was like an icon or a celebrity, but I never thought I would actually meet her.

Then a colleague mentioned that they had passed the gym in the street, and it rang a bell because I was familiar with Nahla’s story. So I thought, “Oh, I would love to go there and just meet the captain and Nahla and the girls.” After I visited, I was so impressed. The girls managed to create a cozy home in this crazy place. That's one of the things that I really loved about them.

How did you build the relationships and trust you needed with the girls and their families?

At first, Captain Ramadan thought that we were journalists and that we’d be with them for a day or two, and then leaving, because they were used to doing news segments. I explained to them that no, we're making a film.

Some of the older girls were not comfortable with us filming at the beginning. So I was very clear with all of the girls that whenever someone felt uncomfortable and didn’t want to be on film that they could come to me directly and I would respect that. I think that after spending four years with them, though, we became part of their routine in a way. They were all really very welcoming and very generous to let us into their lives and their training in this way.

One of the weightlifters we get to know the best is named Zebiba. What was building a relationship with her like?

Zebiba was one of the last people to open up to us while filming. The other girls had much louder personalities and, in the beginning, I think she was always the girl in the corner and sometimes would just leave. And really, she was so young that she seemed like this goofy child in the beginning. But the more she grew up, the more she began speaking up.

But as I said earlier, I was clear from day one that whenever the girls felt uncomfortable, they could just tell me, and we’d stop filming. But that never really happened. The one time it came close was at a competition and Zebiba said to me, ‘Could you please not have the camera so close? The camera makes me more nervous. Please just stay a bit away.’ I completely respected that. We filmed her from a long shot. I think we had this very good relationship where all of them felt that if they ever wanted to stop filming, we would.

This film was also challenging for you as a director because you did not have any funding for most of the time you were filming. Why were you so determined to make this documentary anyway?

It was a labor of love. I really, really believed in this story since day one, and I felt that it's a story that I really want to tell. But also, this community [of young athletes] represents

a lot of things that I believe in regarding women and gender, and I’ve been so amazed by how they are breaking a lot of barriers.

Even I had my own stereotypes and my own prejudices when we started filming. I would have never ever imagined that a woman in a full veil would be OK with her daughter getting into weightlifting. So when I saw that happened, that made me less judgmental in a way. And that’s why I love this gym.

What do you ultimately want viewers to take away from “Lift Like A Girl”?

What I really loved about this film and these girls and women is that they know what they want and they just go for it. Even if no one accepts it, they just do it. We see them get bullied; people once threw rocks at them. But yet they kept going.

I hope that the audience — especially young girls watching — sees that they have to follow their dreams, even if they are unconventional.