Fight Like A Girl

A young Congolese woman escapes from a life of slavery and sexual assault into the world of women’s boxing, where she finds a mentor, a community, a life for herself, and a way to keep on fighting back.

Safi (Qamata) is from the region of Beni, out in the jungle of the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When she was younger, her village was raided by rebel soldiers, who killed her parents and took her captive to live and work in a mineral mine. Constantly living under gunpoint and the threat of sexual assault, Beni sees how her life will go by the fates of those women around her, who carry untold atrocities, done to them and their children, visited upon them every day.

After trying to help her friend, and knocking one of the guards out, Safi is subdued and punished, before making her escape into the long grass and then the trees, and finally into Goma, a city on the Eastern border. Once there, Safi finds a neighbourhood slum to camp out in, and one night has to defend herself from the advances of an over-amorous suitor. After he gets sparked out onto the ground, the word spreads, and soon Safi is talking to the legendary, Balezi Bagunda “Kibimango”, a boxer who has a team of women fighters, who have all come from their own troubles and trauma, and who fight for a way to regain their power.

Based on the real-life events of the real Balezi Bagunda and Clarck Ntambwe, who gets a co-starring role here as Bagunda’s best fighter, Aisha, Fight Like A Girl is a raw, visceral, very real account of their incredible journey. Ntambwe’s story, told as Safi, is a classic triumph over adversity tale, with extreme sadness and brutality overcome to then be used in a positive, life affirming, world building way. The work that Bagunda did, eventually cost him his life in 2025 when M23 soldiers took the city, as he and director, Matthew Leutwyler were aiding the escape of the most vulnerable, but here he is honoured as the mentor, philanthropist, fighter, and much needed male role-model that he was.

That his and Ntambwe’s story is so inextricably linked, allows Safi to tell both stories at once, as we see how much Bagunda meant to her and the other boxers. The fact that Ntambwe is also a part of the film, along with a whole raft of first-time actors, real-life performances, and real-time street scenes, speaks to the authenticity that Leutwyler was aiming for right from the start, as he built his vision around the story he heard and the people he met. This authenticity is shot right through the entire production, from the people, to the locations, to the music, to the vibrancy and rhythm of the shots and the pacing of the film, immersing the viewer into a new world, deep in the DRC, that few have experienced or seen before, and we get ringside seats to some of the best and the worst of it.

That Fight Like A Girl is the first Western produced feature to be shot in the DRC is no surprise. Leutwyler’s contacts and experience from work through his charity, We Are Limitless, has given him a wealth of community to draw from, and he pieces his narrative through that world expertly, giving us an eye on the details as a story that spans an entire nation opens up in front of us. The production is also helped hugely by Richard Henkels’ cinematography, that grabs in the cloudy backdrop of Mount Nyiragongo, as well as the quick, close, shuffle of feet in the ring, and the firelit danger of the night-time streets, with proper ease and style. The main performances from Ama Qamata and Hakeem Kae-Kazim are outstanding, both lending a gravitas and a grounding humanity to the film, while everyone else, regardless of whether it was their first time in front of the camera or not, does an excellent job of keeping it real, for the look and the feel of the film to be apparently seamless with everyday life in Goma.

While there is definite Western narrative at play, with a tight two-hour runtime, and a story that opens out almost bang on the hour mark, with a number of beats being hit along the Rocky (1976) trail of underdog boxing films, Fight Like A Girl is one-hundred percent a Congolese story. It brings the audience on a journey and immerses the viewer in a world that they would otherwise never get to experience, and not only that, it does it with passion, and heart, and integrity. Any time that Fight Like A Girl starts to feel like an indie film, it pulls you right back in, with an incredible shot, or a genuine interaction, or a brutal reality, pitting it as a contender against much bigger, better financed films that don’t do things half as well, and in that it stands as ‘undefeated’.