It was the rush of seeing people like me and my family on screen. The brilliance of the film (really the brilliance of Chadha) is how it weaves together a story where each individual thread and character is worthy of a stand-alone feature.īend It Like Beckham broke new ground when it came to representation When I walked out of the cinema after watching Bend It Like Beckham for the first time (on my 12th birthday), I experienced something I couldn’t properly articulate until much later. She gets spotted by another football player who signs her up to the local amateur women’s team, the Hounslow Harriers, which sets up conflict over culture, family and love. What makes Bend It Like Beckham one of the best movies of all time? It’s a relatively straightforward story: Jess, a high school student living in West London, is an absolute football gun but due to a combination of pressure from her more traditional Punjabi family and the lack of opportunities for female athletes, she can only show off her skills among friends in a local park. And the clearest evidence of that is how, despite its enormous success at both the box office and among critics, there’s been nothing like it since. But in the case of Bend It Like Beckham, it, if anything, actually undersells the film’s significance.

“I think the world was quite shocked and beaten up by that, and here comes this innocent film that is trying to make people understand what it feels like to be different.”ĭescribing any single piece of art, especially a sport-themed, romantic comedy, as something that could heal the world after an event as globally traumatic as 9/11 risks coming across as overly hubristic, to say the least. “I think that had a massive impact on how the film was received globally,” she said. Parminder Nagra (left) in the role of Jess, and Keira Knightley, portraying Jules, in a scene from Bend It Like Beckham. In an interview with the BBC, Chadha invoked the memory of the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City, and described the film as a “great healing moment” for the world.

This week, British film director Gurinder Chadha, who produced, wrote and directed 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham, reflected on the movie’s cultural impact and legacy two decades since its release.

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