Copa 71: The Lost Lionesses review – the wild tale of the

This spectacular, thrilling documentary celebrates the 70s female football tournament that had 110,000 people at its final – despite attempts to suppress it. It’s a rollicking underdog tale

Ask someone when the first Women’s World Cup was held and you may get several answers. Was it the unofficial Coppa del Mondo in 1970, in Italy, or the 1991 contest in China, which Fifa would only call the “World Championship”, or was it the 1995 World Cup, in Sweden, when the quotation marks were finally shaken off?

The fantastically fun Storyville film Copa 71: The Lost Lionesses – which had a theatrical release in March – has an alternative suggestion. It makes a strong case for another unofficial World Cup, which took place in 1971, in Mexico, just after various countries’ bans on women’s football had been lifted. Here, women’s teams competed on the world stage in televised matches. It attracted huge crowds and dared to suggest – cruelly, prematurely – that, after decades underground, women’s football had finally arrived.