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Women’s sport on screen: Somina Fombo's Reel Impact award journey

Reel Impact awardee Somina ‘Mena’ Fombo shares her journey into documentary storytelling, creative agency, and amplifying the stories of women in sport
12 March 2026

Documenting British American Football - Team GB Women’s Trials. Photo credit: Sarah Hurley

Somina Fombo is a Bristol-based documentary filmmaker, and a Reel Impact awardee

Last year I was begging and borrowing kit from anyone kind enough to trust me with it. Lots of favours and gratitude. When I could not borrow, I hired. And when you are self-funding development – that hurts.

Receiving a Reel Impact award from the Film and TV Charity changed that. I could finally invest in relevant kit. But what I really gained was agency. Because this was never just about cameras.

The backbone of my career 

Equity, inclusion and belonging have always been the backbone of my hybrid career. Long before I called myself a director, I was a speaker and facilitator centring coaching, leadership and talking about anti-racism and inclusive practice. My TEDx talk, No. You Cannot Touch My Hair, was about centring our voices and our experiences. That commitment to racial justice through representation has followed me into film. 

I also played rugby for more than 11 years and was part of the Great Britain women’s practice squad in American football. I know what it feels like to graft in a system that does not prioritise you. So, when I started archiving either women’s sport, stories centring black women and the wider diaspora, it was not just a strategic move. It was personal. 

Taking control and my first sports documentary commission 

After pitching various women’s sports documentaries to broadcasters and getting nowhere, I stopped waiting. With rugby particularly I had already been filming matches, collecting interviews, and building an archive. I had shifted from seeking permission to generating the work myself. 

Access to kit meant I could show up consistently. Capture the moments and build trust with contributors. 

Ironically a sports commission did come, No Rucks Given! supported by Warner Brothers Discovery Access and TNT Sports in collaboration with my cofounded company Blak Wave Productions ltd. The archive I had built independently strengthened the pitch.

My experience with commissioning 

When it comes to pitching there is a tension in this space. Take the money and risk compromise? Or move slower and protect your creative licence? I do not think it is either or, I think it is about integrity.

Are my values intact? Are the people involved genuinely committed to equity? And is this an environment where inclusion is real and not lip service?

Being a racial justice advocate, an ex-player, and a self-shooting producer director in women’s sport is not a random combination. It is about creating an intentional advantage.

It gives me flexibility. It gives me leverage. It gives me the ability to keep telling stories that I believe need to be told via an intersectional female lens.

My Reel Impact award 

Using the Reel Impact award to invest in my own kit has removed one more structural barrier between development and execution. Finance that would previously have gone on hire can now be reinvested into development within my indie. It has strengthened my agency, giving me greater control over what I create and when I create it. It is not a golden ticket, but the impact on how I can develop and sustain the work is significant. 

For me, owning the kit was never just about the gear. It was about story ownership and about pushing for greater equity in who gets to document, archive and shape the narratives within our sector.

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