Director Vijayeta Kumar’s Kicking Balls recently premièred on Prasar Bharati’s newly launched OTT platform, Waves. But releasing the documentary—which explores how certain Rajasthan villages are combating child marriage by training girls in football—was tough despite Oscar winner Guneet Monga Kapoor backing it, says the director. It all started in 2017 when Kumar saw a football camp in Ajmer while passing by her school one day.

“I saw many girls playing football. I was impressed by the NGO [Mahila Jan Adhikar] working with these girls. I pitched the docu’s concept to Guneet; this was when she had just won the Oscar for Period: End of Sentence [2018]. Then Ashvini [Yardi, producer] came on board because she champions this cause. I was lucky funding-wise, but after that, it was very hard to get [it released] despite Guneet’s Oscar and all the connections. The mainstream platforms didn’t want documentaries,” she recalls.

In 2024, after three years of pitching the project to OTT giants, the docu finally found a home in Prasar Bharati. But Kumar says it was greenlit only after a few cuts. “They asked us to censor a couple of things, [including] a clip of a BJP MLA saying that he backs child marriage,” she reveals.

Kicking Balls chronicles how Rajasthan’s young girls use football as a tool to build their confidence and reclaim their agency, to raise their voice against child marriage. Having spent years researching the subject, Kumar says the social evil continues in 2024 due to economic strain.

“Poverty is the root cause. We have a girl, Anu, in the film. Her parents have nine daughters and then one son. In her community, the tradition is that if an elderly person dies, they have to give a feast to the village. So, they think, we are spending money on this, let’s just marry off some of the girls at the same event. So, poverty is one of the biggest reasons for it.”