The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony is an intimate coming-of-age documentary from three-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Habiba Nosheen. It follows three teenage girls in Pakistan whose passion for gymnastics begins to clash with entrenched expectations of what girls can and cannot do. Straddling two opposing worlds, they push to make space for themselves, offering a rare, tender portrait of girlhood, joy, and play on society’s margins. A story of hope and quiet defiance, the film reveals girls from a corner of the world rarely seen on screen—girls who dare to dream.
The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony
The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony
Filmmaker Notes:
A few years ago, I found myself reflecting on the fact that we rarely hear stories about the amazing women and girls in Pakistan who are reshaping societal expectations with their boldness and determination. So I wanted to tackle a film that centred around the joy and depth in the lives of young women in Pakistan. That was the inspiration for The Gymnasts
of Fisherman Colony. It is the film that I wish had existed in the world when I was growing up.
In some ways, I didn’t find this story. It found me. The journey of this story started nine years ago when I first met Tahera Hasan, the lawyer in the film. She was my adoption attorney. She specialized in helping families adopt abandoned children in Pakistan who had been left at orphanages anonymously. My daughter was one of those children. It was only years after I returned from Pakistan that I learned about this girls’ gymnastics team, and I knew I wanted to tell their story.
When I was growing up in Lahore, Pakistan as a little girl, I could never have imagined doing something like gymnastics. I grew up thinking that sports weren’t for girls. It filled me with joy to know that a new generation of Pakistani girls is growing up with opportunities that I would have been too scared to dream of. This film is not about a young girl who wants to make it to the Olympics. For me, the message of this film is that all girls should have the opportunities to participate in sports. It’s about teaching girls to take up space. And part of the outreach that is really important to me is dismantling this myth that Islam and girls’ sports don’t coexist. That’s simply not true. We need to empower the girls who are at the forefront of challenging that myth.
