Tribeca Film Festival Review: ‘Maiden’

The documentary “Maiden” tells the story of a group of women overcoming incredible odds and intense sexism to compete in a race around the world.

In September of 1989, a crew of 12 set out on the sailing yacht Maiden in the Whitbread Round the World Race. Held every three years, the Whitbread race treks 33,000 miles across the oceans, beginning in Southampton, England and traveling to South America, near Antarctica, around Australia, back to the US, and all the way around to Southampton. The “skipper” (basically the captain of the ship) had overcome some personal tragedy from childhood and had dropped out of college before becoming one of the most recognizable sailors in the world.

It is a story that no one would have paid attention to if it weren’t also one of the most groundbreaking moments for women in sports history.

The story of Tracy Edwards and of her ship and crew is what makes Maiden (the film) so entertaining. Similar in ways to a larger scale — and possibly deadlier — version of the 1973 tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, known as the “Battle of the Sexes.” Yet Edwards might have had an even harder narrative to master, captaining 12 women in a race that takes nearly half a year from start to finish opposite boats that had hundreds of members. It was a fight to prove that it could be done at all.

Directed by Alex Holmes and edited by Katie Bryer, Maiden tells this story with aplomb, giving Edwards and much of her crew the ability to tell their story themselves, with a few male talking heads popping up to express how they doubted her success. The storytelling is at times just an oral history put to film, but editor Bryer takes a massive amount of archival footage (much of it shot on the boat by the crew members in 1989-1990) and turns it into a compelling visual narrative, mixed in with some truly breathtaking footage of boats on the water shot by Holmes and crew today. The film doesn’t reinvent the documentary form, but it is a story that deserved to be told and is given a great effort here. Plus, Tracy Edwards is such a compelling screen presence that you want to watch her and nothing else.

There are minor events that are incredibly watchable, with a heart-pounding boat repair sequence and a moment involving reclaiming a narrative away from the chauvinist press each highlight. But overall Maiden is a smart if not particularly world-changing documentary, telling a tale that I hope will live on past this film. Tracy Edwards belongs in the same conversations as Billie Jean King and other similar icons, the kind of woman who can laugh when recounting a man telling her that “Girls are for screwing when you get into port.” Because she knows that girls can do much more than that.

Maiden screened May 1st at the Tribeca Film Festival.