The new documentary Speed Sisters profiles, reality television-style, the first and apparently only all-woman team in the world of Arab street motorsports, specifically in the West Bank, Palestine. Passionate and industrious manager Maysoon sets the tone for the team, whose four other members compete against male drivers and one another in labyrinthine, improvised tracks marked out by traffic cones. As the team’s nimble, modified street cars careen through ridiculously tight turns, it’s apparent that roaring engines, squealing tires, and black rubber smoke are like catnip to racers Marah, Betty, Noor, and Mona. Manicures notwithstanding, they aren’t token pretenders, but fiercely competitive gearheads whose ache to win carries a streak of feminist defiance.
Unsurprisingly, an intra-team rivalry emerges as the film’s central conflict, which plays out over a single season within Palestine’s almost wholly male racing association. There’s not much to Speed Sisters beyond what is contained in its nickel summary—Arabic women racing cars, in defiance of conservative Islam and despite Israeli occupation—and as cinema it’s vexingly plain and unadventurous. Still, director Amber Fares assembles earnest interviews, nail-biting races, and fly-on-the wall pit-stop drama into a respectable sports documentary. There are patches of story turbulence that specifically originate with the Palestinian setting, such as when an Israeli tear gas canister strikes a racer, or when the dictatorial racing president shows his misogynist bias. Mostly, however, Fares keeps things focused on the agony and ecstasy of competition, evinced most wonderfully by Marah’s proud display of a homemade trophy awarded to her by her endlessly supportive, self-sacrificing father.
Speed Sisters will screen at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 27 at the Webster University Film Series in the Winifred Moore Auditorium. Producer Avi Goldstein will be in attendance to answer questions. Admission is $6 (cash only).
