HBO’s Angel City documentary: The clashes, the production value and the code words

Angel City FC’s eponymous HBO documentary is drenched in sunlight. It’s full of gorgeous slow-motion shots of players mid-game, bringing you in close to the action, trying to fill you up with the roaring crowd sounds. That’s why it’s so jarring to go back to actual NWSL broadcast footage, where the visual and audio quality is often variable, swinging between “fine” and “yikes.”

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That’s an encapsulation of the overall Angel City experience vis-a-vis NWSL: ACFC likes to put out a comparatively lavish affair in a league that is just now starting to find stronger financial footing. This documentary is no different, finally dipping a toe into the extremely fruitful waters of sports documentaries, which we’ve seen deliver audience growth for other sports and leagues, like the WNBA’s Sports Emmy-nominated “144” about playing a season in the Wubble, the NFL’s Hard Knocks, and of course, F1’s Drive to Survive, which is frequently credited with boosting the popularity of F1 in the United States . 

Directed by longtime cinematographer Arlene Nelson, and produced in part by ACFC co-owner Natalie Portman’s MountainA, alongside Little Monster Films and O’Malley Creadon Productions, this documentary aims to mine some of that sports documentary success not just for Angel City, but for the league and for women’s soccer as a whole in the United States.

You only have to see the massive jump in NWSL team valuations from roughly $5M to $50M over the last few years to get a sense of the money that is starting to pour into women’s soccer in this country. And this documentary is a good place to pause and reflect on where audiences want this growth to go. What stories should we tell, how do we tell them, and why?