Dream team: Who is Caimana, the first transgender player’s interpreter to play at the World Cup?

After Thor: Love And Thunder, Taika Waititi returned with a more modest film, A Dream Team. This comedy tells the true story of the American Samoa football team, which suffered the worst defeat in World Cup history in 2001, losing 31-0 to Australia. With the 2014 World Cup qualifiers approaching, a new infamous coach has been hired.

Opposite Michael Fassbender as the gruff coach, the audience will discover Kaimana, an Arab actress making her film debut. They play Jaiyah Saelua, a forward on the team who is “Fa’afafine” (literally “woman-like”), which in American Samoan culture refers to people whose gender is fluid and evolves between masculine and feminine. “It’s a sacred part of their culture and it’s just accepted.”The director explains.

Kaimana is the only actor who met his real-life counterpart: “I didn’t need to separate the real Jaya from the character because we’re so similar. That’s what drove me. Jaya has no other goal than to be herself and support the team and the community she loves.”

Jaiyah Saelua is the world’s first openly transgender female soccer player to play in a FIFA World Cup qualifier in 2014. In the columns of Vanity FairHe returns to his gender identity: “It is an umbrella term that can include gay men, non-binary people or trans women. We are a recognized and respected third gender in our culture and society. There is no stigma, we play an important and specific role in our communities. If I can compete at the highest level in football I can achieve it because I grew up in a society that accepts me, values ​​me and recognizes my identity.”

Although the American Samoa soccer team has already been the subject of a documentary in 2015, Jaya Saelua can’t believe how a movie is inspired by their story: “It was crazy to think that an Oscar-winning Pacific Island filmmaker was going to make a movie about me and my team. That I was going to be immortalized in a Hollywood movie for generations to come.”

To see the dream team that Taika Waititi describes as “The best story about material people”We will meet in cinemas, where the film will be shown from December 20.

Kaimana, Jaya Saelua, Michael Fassbender and Taika Waititi return to our mics to talk about the incredible story of Team American Samoa: