The forgotten women’s football film banned in Brazil

Onda Nova opens with a battle of the sexes football match, but with a twist: everyone cross-dresses. Two women watch on with glee, painting red lipstick onto the lips of a young man and sealing it with a kiss. A wiry, muscular footballer ties his floor-length, fuchsia dress at his hips, for ease of movement. Women laugh as they sprint across the field, giddy at the thought of going down on each other after the match. It’s a glorious opening scene filled with queer joy; more specifically, it’s a glimpse at the sheer delights of football when it’s a game that’s open to all.

The film was initially released in 1983, but it was swiftly banned by Brazil’s military dictatorship at the time. More than four decades later, Onda Nova has been restored and is set to be re-released in Brazil, but it’s also screening in the UK this week as part of the BFI Flare LGBTQIA+ film festival.

This restoration has been an “emotional process,” says co-director Francisco C. Martins. It’s one of several films he co-created with his close friend José Antonio Garcia, who passed away in 2005. “I couldn’t stand to watch Onda Nova, because the original print was in such a terrible condition. I was ashamed of it,” he says. It wasn’t until 2021 that Julia Duarte – who executive produced the restoration – spoke about the film with her partner and sent the DVD cover to the curator of Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival. This spark of interest led to talks of reviving the film, but it initially felt like an impossible task.

“The production company doesn’t exist any more, and the main producer of the film died many years ago,” Duarte explains. Driven by belief in the film, funding raised by the families of Martins and Garcia, and a series of film companies willing to do low-cost or free work, the restoration slowly came to life. “It was like watching a resuscitation,” says Martins. “It was really euphoric. I started to get memories of working on the film, and I worked with [Garcia’s] daughters; it felt like a revival of the partnership we had.”

Onda Nova chronicles a key moment in Brazilian history: the liberation of women’s football. There’s evidence of charity matches and tournaments being played by women’s football clubs in the early 1900s, but generally rules were made to ban working-class women and women of colour from playing the sport. This didn’t stop them; friendly matches took place in the streets and on factory floors instead. This culture continued until 1940, when a landmark women’s match at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paolo drew a mammoth crowd of 65,000 screaming fans.

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The backlash was swift. “Women’s football was banned in Brazil from 1941 to 1979,” explains Martins, “and it was really forbidden – girls couldn’t play football at school, for instance. In 1983, they were just starting to regulate football for women again, but there were still these public debates around stupid things like whether it made women too masculine.” These tired tropes become punchlines in Onda Nova, with conservative characters striking up fear-mongering tropes, such as increasing access to football will turn women into butch, drug-taking lesbians. The film sticks two fingers up at these accusations, but also asks: would that really be so bad?

Women’s football had some key supporters at the time, namely the Corinthians, a distinctly political and working-class team, which played a key role in the creation of Onda Nova. Brazilian football buffs might even spot a few high-profile players in the film – members of the “Corinthian Democracy” movement who challenged the military dictatorship. “We would never have been able to shoot the film if it weren’t for them,” says Martins. “They opened up their stadium for us to film.” The movement gained traction, and within a few years, Brazil had a national women’s football team. Progress has continued to accelerate over the last forty years, buoyed by the record-breaking successes of players like Marta, a national treasure who is widely described as the greatest women’s footballer of all time.

In many ways, Onda Nova uses this fight for women’s football as a stand-in for feminist fights of the time more broadly, such as sexual liberation. The film borrows from the horny tradition of pornochanchada – “erotic comedies” – which reigned supreme in Brazil from the ’60s onwards, so expect plenty of sex: dry-humping in the back of taxicabs, naked writhing on the polished floor of a huge gymnasium, frenzied fucking in the football locker room. To quote a Letterboxd review: “Almost certainly the only movie in history to feature gay sex under a rare Revenge of the Jedi poster.”

Still, the censorship came as a surprise. “There were rules,” recalls Martins. “It’s OK to shoot tits and butts, but no penis, no explicit sex, things like that. We shot the film knowing these rules, and we had already made a similar film – The Magic Eye of Love – a year earlier, which was a success.”

What actually pissed off the dictatorship’s censorship bureau was Onda Nova’s laidback attitude towards queerness. “There’s a whole women’s football team, and they talk about everything so naturally,” explains Martins. “They talk about abortion, they have sex freely, there’s queerness in the film, and there are football players cross-dressing. That would be unthinkable even today because of commercial contracts. Basically, [censors] couldn’t just cut one thing or another, so they banned the whole film.” Martins and his co-director underwent the months-long process of appealing the censorship; a few months into this fight, he says, “pornographic films were liberated in Brazil.” By the time Onda Nova had been freed, the film’s momentum was dead. “When the film was finally released, the theatrical market had changed completely. You had hardcore porn, or you had films with no sex at all. Films like Onda Nova are seen as soft porn, so that’s why it flopped.”

• Read next: A portrait of teenage resistance in Brazil

Things have changed exponentially since the ‘80s, and Onda Nova is enjoying a new, international fanbase. Martins is packing to fly to London as we speak, and he has “great expectations – I think England has more or less the same relationship with football as Brazil. People play it because they like it, not just because they see it as a possible profession.” Both BFI Flare film screenings are sold out, indicating a big queer fanbase, too. It’s not hard to see why: the humour is tongue-in-cheek, and the acting is gloriously camp – Lilli’s mother in particular is at her pearl-clutching best, screaming at her daughter: “You ungrateful lesbian!”

Debates around inclusive football – specifically trans inclusion – in football continue to rage, but films like Onda Nova strip away the prejudice and celebrate the beautiful game as a hub for community-building, queer joy, and an industry in which women can excel, if they’re given fair access and opportunities. “I can even say,” whispers Martins with a grin, “that the women’s Brazilian football team is better than the men’s.”

Onda Nova is on show at the BFI Flare London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival on March 25 and March 29. For more on BFI Flare 2025, visit its official website.

Jake Hall is a freelance writer and author of Shoulder to Shoulder: A Queer History of Solidarity, Coalition and Chaos. Follow them on Instagram.

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