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Alina Skrzeszewska, Director
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Jean-Laurent Csinidis, Producer
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Meike Martens, Producer
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Kelly Parker, Producer
About the Project
GAME GIRLS is a feature documentary about the hopes and dreams of women living on the extreme fringes of contemporary American society. It sheds light on the unseen and unheard stories Los Angeles' Skid Row, best known as "the homeless capital of the U.S.A.". Alina Skrzeszewska has about a decade of experience in the neighborhood, having lived and filmed there before.
For GAME GIRLS, Alina and her production team started an 18-months-long drama-therapy workshop program open to all women in the community and facilitated by a Registered Drama-Therapist. In the workshop, the women are personally challenged as they struggle to connect with their memories, hopes, and long lost dreams, sometimes buried underneath a history of trauma, addiction, incarceration, and poverty.
The women of GAME GIRLS are mothers, daughters, sisters, friends and girlfriends. Alina Skrzeszewska films each of them with great sensibility, creating powerful portraits of women whose faces and bodies carry histories of trauma. Like evocative landscapes, they invite us to look beyond what is visible, thus allowing a new perspective on complex social issues exacerbated by poverty (such as childhood trauma, domestic violence, drug abuse, mental health issues, discrimination based on race, gender or sexual orientation, police brutality, incarceration).
They are all struggling to transform their lives. They are forging new identities that will bring them closer to the life they once dreamed of. As they continue to live in a rough environment, they are attending the workshop, allowing themselves to be vulnerable and hopeful once again. This transformative process is captured in a deeply intimate way, making GAME GIRLS a visceral and immersive cinematic experience for the audience. We recognize ourselves in these women, and find our prejudices and misconceptions challenged.