With filmmaker Aysun Bademsoy in person

German Movie Nights are back! The German Film Office is pleased to present a free screening of Game Changers (2024), the latest entry in a thirty-year documentary project by Turkish-German filmmaker Aysun Bademsoy. Q&A with Bademsoy to follow. Please register to attend.

In the early 1990s, Bademsoy first began chronicling the lives of the members of Berlin-Kreuzberg’s BSC Agrispor, the only Turkish women’s soccer club in Europe. Her observations became Girls on the Ball (1995), a look into how these 16- to 18-year-old players balanced tradition, prejudice, and self-determination with the usual tumults of adolescence. 

After two more films—After the Game (1997) and In the Game (2008)—comes Game Changers. The members of BSC Agrispor now have daughters of their own, who were born and raised in Germany and grapple with similar questions of belonging. The players reminisce about their time on the team, the role of soccer in providing them with a sense of community, and how much, if anything, has really changed since then.

Game Changers made its world premiere at 2024 DOK Leipzig in the German Competition.

Looking for more soccer films as the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaches? Check out “Breaking Lines”, a series celebrating the empowering, unifying force of the “beautiful game”. Streaming free on Goethe on Demand through July 31!

Spielerinnen
Dir. Aysun Bademsoy
Germany, 2024
86 min.
With Arzu Çalkılıç, Türkan Çelik, Nalan Keleş, Nazan Yavaş


Aysun Bademsoy
Aysun Bademsoy was born in Mersin in 1960 and aged nine moved to Berlin, where she still lives. She made her first foray into film as an actress, whilst also studying theatre and media studies at Berlin’s Free University. She got together with students from the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) and took on assistant editing and directing roles. Her first documentary film saw her working with young people, using their migrant experience to bring a fresh perspective on the social landscape of Germany. The various realities of life in Berlin are a recurring theme in her observational documentaries, juxtaposed with the counter-shots of people in Turkey who have left Germany. Her films have been screened at numerous international festivals. Since 2024, the Deutsche Kinemathek took on the task of preserving and digitally restoring her work.