Directors: Vanna Hem and Tommaso Colognese
This understated documentary from Cambodia tells the story of Leak, a trans man, finding solace in a women’s football team run by another trans man, Pa Vann. However, the term ‘trans man’ might be too much of a Western identity to describe Leak and Pa Vann. They have forged their own selves, unrestricted by labels.
When Leak was a teenager, he went to live with Pa Vann in Kampong Chhnang in rural Cambodia. Leak’s family thought that Pa Vann’s influence and nurturing skills might help Leak through adolescence. Now Leak sees Pa Vann as a father figure and a teacher. Pa Vann doesn’t just coach the under-21s women’s football team but he also teaches the players how to make furniture, truly setting up his protégés for later life.
Leak is not the only queer player on Pa Vann’s team. There are a few other trans men and some lesbians too. With his short hair and boyish looks, Leak is sometimes asked his gender by match officials. Despite identifying as a man, Leak also has to identify as a woman if he wants to play football. Leak’s identity is fluid and strategic. Pa Vann is proud of the diversity in his team and lets any player who needs his assistance come and live in his home. With a variety of domestic animals running around, Pa Vann’s house is chaotic but it affords a loving and supportive base for his players.
Vanna Hem and Tommaso Colognese’s 70-minute documentary sometimes loses focus; we spend just as much time with Leak as we do Pa Vann, but their previous lives are only sketched out for us. For instance, we never discover where Pa Vann gets his money from to buy the minibuses that take the teams to the games or to build the pitch outside his home. This is a snapshot of time rather than a biographical look at two people. However, as the football team begins to prepare for the National Games in Phnom Penh the film finally has a trajectory.
Filmed over a period of five years, both Leak and Pa Vann are very relaxed talking to the invisible camera. And by the end of the film, now living in the capital, Leak discusses his plans for the future, wishing he had enough money to pay for ‘top surgery’. Much of his confidence comes from the loving home that Pa Vann provided but most of this is unsaid and, when they meet up again, there are no tearful embraces or gushing speeches. This lack of sentimentality gives Lotus Sports Club a solid sense of realness helped, too, by the bleached-out colour tone that Hem and Colognese choose.
But despite this eschewal of easy sentiment, the filmmakers do come up with a happy ending. It takes place at a Pride event where there are lots of Westerners in attendance. This kaleidoscope of cultures and glitter could easily be its own subject for a film, but for Pa Vann and Leak, especially, it signals hope for the future.
