Gaea Girls

The documentary was shot at the rural training camp of a Japanese wrestling organisation called Gaea. The young women who come there want to be professional wrestlers. The film follows four of them closely. The training is run by the organisation’s champion, Chigusa Nagayo. Nagayo’s method is very hard; she pushes her trainees to the physical limit. It is a gruelling, physical film, and the makers do not make heavy weather of it. The film also does away with the idea that the sport is staged; the blows are real. The account neither glorifies nor accuses; it shows what happens. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams’s British documentary of 2000 runs a hundred and four minutes.