Dina Duma’s ‘Skateboarding Is Not for Girls’ Is About Much More Than Just Skateboarding

In 2022, Macedonian filmmaker Dina Duma came to the Sarajevo Film Festival with a script.

That script — about a young girl empowered by her skateboard — was so impressive that it won her the Female Voices CineLink Award during the fest’s industry program, a feat that would come with a prize of 20,000 Euros to help kickstart production.

Four years later, Duma is back in the Bosnian capital with the finished film in tow. Skateboarding Is Not for Girls is competing in the feature film selection, and Duma is still in disbelief. “It feels very full circle,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter from Sarajevo’s National Theatre on Wednesday, where we’ve sat down to discuss the making of this powerful, poignant project. Related Stories Movies Busan Film Festival Sets Kim Jong-kwan's 'The Table: Day and Night' as Opening Film News RFK Jr.'s Son Conor Kennedy Put on Russia's Most Wanted List

In Skateboarding Is Not for Girls , 11-year-old Adela (Efkjar Abaz) is devoted to her elder sister, 15-year-old Zara (Dzefrina Jashari). But after their father leaves for Switzerland, the girls’ mother, Esma (Simonida Selimovic), can’t make ends meet. After exhausting all options, including selling their car and moving in with a relative, Esma makes the painful decision to wed Zara for the dowry. It tears Adela apart, and she decides to enter a skateboarding competition in the hope of winning the cash prize for her family.

Inspired by a young girl she saw skateboarding in traditional Islamic dress as well as an old-school friend who was married by the age of 14, Duma’s movie is about much, much more than just skateboarding. “Even when you don’t see the man, you can feel the patriarchy,” says Duma about depicting women without agency in Skopje, Macedonia, where the film was shot. “While Adela is riding in these skate parks, this is the only space where she can be free.”

Skateboarding Is Not for Girls had its world premiere just a couple of months ago at Tribeca , but its director hopes that the “Balkan mentality” will come in handy when screening for a Sarajevo audience — where those themes of liberation, autonomy and female independence will resonate enormously.

Below, Duma discusses feeling drawn to writing characters from a female perspective, sounding the alarm on child marriage in Macedonia and feeling just a little nervous about her Sarajevo premiere: “I hope it stays with them, and they don’t forget [it] after they drink their first drink!”

Talk to me about when this idea struck you, and why you wanted to put it up on screen.

I was riding my bike on a riverbank in Skopje. I don’t know if you’ve ever been [to] Skopje. It has a beautiful river in the middle. It was a regular day, and I saw a girl who was on her skateboard, but she was dressed in Shalwar, a traditional [Islamic] dress. And she looked so interesting because she was on her skateboard dressed like that. I was amazed when I saw this image. And after some time, I kept thinking about it. She was so interesting. She was somehow very young, but also, she was very mature in a way. I didn’t start writing immediately.