Blood and Water’ Star Ama Qamata to Play Boxer in ‘Fight Like a Girl’
Rising South African actress Ama Qamata, the star of Netflix’s breakout hit Blood and Water, has signed on to star as a female boxer in Fight Like a Girl, an upcoming feature from writer/director Matthew Leutwyler (The River Why, Uncanny).
Qamata will star alongside Nigerian actor Hakeem Kae-Kazim (Godzilla vs. Kong, Starz TV’s Black Sails) as a young Congolese woman forced to work in an illegal mineral mine who manages to escapes her captors and find a new life for herself after joining an all-women boxing club in the border city of Goma.
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The film, billed as the first-ever Western narrative feature to shoot entirely in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is inspired by a real-life boxing club that Leutwyler and producing partner Anton Laines have been following for the past two years as part of an upcoming docuseries. Several members of the club will play supporting roles in the film.
Rwandan actors Malaika Uwamahoro, Kennedy Mazimpaka and Arthur Nkusi also star. Congolese boxing champion Clarck Ntambwe will make her acting debut in Fight Like a Girl.
Laines will produce the film through KG28Media, the production banner he runs with Leutwyler. Qamata’s manager Yvette Davis Gayle will also serve as producer, with Colin Gayle executive producing through the Gayles’ Africa Creative Agency company.
Congolese NBA star Serge Ibaka of the Milwaukee Bucks and his Ouenzé Entertainment company partner Jordi Vilà Sánchez will also serve as executive producers on Fight Like a Girl. This will be the company’s first narrative feature project.
“I had to go through a lot of obstacles from growing up in Congo to being an NBA Champion, and this is a story about Congo and Africa and about how sports can help overcome challenging times in our lives,” Ibaka said in a statement. “The story about these African women is inspiring and needs to be told.”
In addition to his feature work, which includes 2010 drama The River Why starring Amber Heard, William Hurt, and Zach Gilford, and the 2015 sci-fi horror Uncanny, Leutwyler runs a NGO, We are Limitless, which has helped provide education and health care to Rwandan and Congolese orphans and children-in-need for the past decade.
Qamata recently wrapped the third season of teen mystery series Blood and Water, in which she plays a teen trying to navigate the complicated world of a South African high school.
Ama Qamata is represented in the United States by Luber Roklin Entertainment.
