Film on US Women’s National Soccer Team’s Fight for Equality Is Inspiring

On March 8, 2019, when all of the players on the U.S. Women’s National Team filed suit against their employer, the U.S. Soccer Federation, for pay discrimination, Abby Greensfelder called a friend, Molly Levinson, with a game-changing question.

“It was front page of The New York Times,” remembers Greensfelder, the founder of Everywoman Studios. Greensfelder asked Levinson, who is an advisor and spokesperson for the players, if the team had plans for documenting the process. “And she said, ‘No, it’s too complicated, too hard.’ And I said, ‘Well, someone needs to tell the story — because it's unprecedented.” Greensfelder took it as a challenge. “If it couldn't be done, then we should find out how to do it.”

So they did.

LFG — the 2021 documentary produced by Change Content, Everywoman Studios, and Propagate Content in collaboration with CNN Films and HBO Max and directed by Academy Award winners Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine — chronicles the team’s years-long fight for equal pay through the eyes of the players, lawyers, and advocates on the front lines. (The title captures the spirit of their fight with a family-friendly version of the team’s rallying cry: “Let’s f*cking go.”)

LFG offers viewers a window into the real costs of inequality — and what the women on the USWNT have sacrificed in pursuit of not just their dreams, but their dignity.

“It took true blood, sweat, and tears to get to where I am today,” team member Jessica McDonald declares within the first 10 minutes of the film. “I achieved my dream. But we don’t get paid much.” She explains that some years, friends who work as waitresses make more than she does, and later recalls working in an Amazon warehouse during off-seasons to make ends meet. “The willingness for these players to be vulnerable and to let us in to see the humanness of their experience,” Greensfelder said, “[is] part of what made that really powerful.”

That’s why, alongside footage of breathtaking goals and victory laps, viewers also bear witness to the ways in which the lives of these women athletes are shaped by this sport and their mission to make it better. It’s a paradigm shift on screen — away from hero worship and toward a vision of collective power, and without glossing over the hard work of advancing equality, no matter our experiences and backgrounds.

We see McDonald coaching for extra cash, working out at home with her son on her back, and crying while she hugs him goodbye to go to Olympic training. We watch Christen Press urge Megan Rapinoe over FaceTime to stop reviewing legal documents and go to sleep, and we see Rapinoe get into a car at 3 a.m., full of anxiety, to continue making media appearances on behalf of her team. In a series of testimonials throughout, the players open up about the fear they felt of losing their careers for speaking up. In behind-the-scenes footage shot in dressing rooms and locker rooms, we see them responding in real time to online harassment and to full-page ads declaring support for their cause. Viewers wait outside various buildings as day turns to night during confidential multi-day mediation sessions and seven-hour depositions, and watch the eyes of the players who demonstrate so much fortitude on the field well up with tears when they hear, on a group call, that a judge has summarily dismissed part of their lawsuit.

We watch these women refuse to give up — in pursuit of their next goal and in pursuit of their larger mission. We watch as all of them, each iconic in her own right, come together and become something bigger than themselves.

“We’re not just fighting for soccer glory,” Becky Sauerbrunn says on screen. “We’re also representing what women can be when given a certain platform.” Over and over again, various players echo her next declaration: “Anything less than winning is failure.”

“It’s our responsibility to make the world a better place,” Rapinoe adds. Press confirms: “The best thing that we could do for soccer, for the lawsuit, for everything that we’re fighting for — equality — is to win.”

Though their fight is ongoing, that footage cements their legacy as committed advocates for change. “If we weren't able to get this access and tell the story, there's part of the hard work that it took that wouldn't be known to the world,” Greensfelder observed. “I think ultimately that's why they wanted to do it — less for themselves than for those that will come behind them.”

“They’re bigger than athletes,” Meghan Duggan‚ 2018 Olympic gold medalist in ice hockey and incoming president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, echoed at a press screening, “and this is bigger than sports.”

So is its impact. College basketball coach Dawn Staley was inspired in part by the film to negotiate a $22 million deal — making her one of the highest-paid coaches in women’s basketball. But so was one of the executives who commissioned the film for HBO Max — who renegotiated her contract after she saw the rough cut. During screenings, men and boys are just as likely as women and girls to walk away inspired and in awe of the women they saw on screen — a radical turning point in a media world where women’s stories are often dismissed and ignored.

Those reverberations are happening by design. “We really looked in and said: How could this film help make a dent in this world and make things better? What's really needed?” Through local and virtual screenings with schools and organizations, LFG has become a tool for education and action. An impact campaign launched in December, #WhenWeValueWomen, further connects individuals to organizations advancing large-scale change, including the Women’s Sports Foundation, Athlete Ally, Equality League, Step Up, UN Women, and the Geena Davis Institute for Gender in Media, which just released new data on the impact of invisibility for women in sports.

“If we are victorious in the case,” one of the team’s co-counsels in the first lawsuit explains on camera, “this will be one of those landmark decisions that will be talked about for decades.” But even though the case remains in appeals, LFG’s eye-opening look into the process, and the stakes for the players as well as for women in sports more broadly, has made certain that their story will remain resonant. In telling the stories of one incredible group of women, the team behind the camera and the women brave enough to step in front of it offer inspiration to viewers to be just as stubborn, insistent, and determined in their battles.

“All of us know what it’s like to stand up for ourselves,” Greensfelder said. “This movie is a reminder that we can.”

Interested in hosting a community screening at your organization or school? Please email the LFG film team at lfg@everywomanstudios.com.