Skateboarding is Not for Girls

In a context where tradition continues to determine women's destinies, skateboarding becomes much more than a game: it offers a possibility of movement, both physical and existential, within a reality that would rather predetermine every trajectory. Adela, masterfully portrayed by Efkjar Abaz, observes the world with a disenchanted gaze, almost alien to the rules that govern it. While she dreams of taking part in a skateboarding competition, her older sister is destined for an arranged marriage for economic reasons: their father has gone to Switzerland, where he has another woman, and has stopped sending money to the family. The two sisters see their bodies already inscribed with a destiny decided by others.

With its spare writing and remarkable powers of observation, Skateboarding Is Not a for Girls explores the conflict between a traditional order and the possibilities of a present that opens up, not without contradictions, before Adela's eyes. Her skateboard, like the video she must upload to YouTube to be admitted to the competition, represents a concrete opportunity to imagine a different future. On the other hand, her sister's marriage seems to turn economic survival into a legitimisation of exchange: even affections and individual desire become negotiable.

The film also draws on irony and almost playful situations to make the drama of this context even more apparent. The female body, monitored and judged, becomes the place where tradition claims to certify its own authority, culminating in the paradox of the white bedsheet, called upon to establish a woman's worth through a test as ancient as it is arbitrary. Here, the personal story takes on a vital dimension: who has the right to decide what a body can do, what kind of life it can inhabit, and what future it is allowed to imagine?

Without resorting to proclamations, the film shows how women's freedom continues to contend with social structures capable of turning custom into destiny. And yet, when the story seems to have already determined its outcome, life introduces a detour: the three women find themselves together again, while the possibility of leaving opens up for Adela. Not a miraculous solution, but a rupture in the established order of things. Because sometimes, changing one's trajectory does not require overturning the world: it is enough to manage not to follow the path laid out before you.

Freedom is always the freedom to dissent. — Rosa Luxemburg