In her feature documentary debut Freedom Fields, Naziha Arebi shows the long-term struggles of a group of women attempting to get a Libyan national women's soccer team up and running as their country is moving from revolution to violent conflict.

Arebi was born and raised in the UK, but her father is of Libyan descent. She first returned to Libya with her father in 2010, and then moved there in the wake of the revolutions of the “Arab Spring”. “I'd already heard of this Libyan women's soccer team back in London. So when I ended up moving to Libya, I set out to find them.”

What interested her most when she finally met the team, was the great variety in the women's backgrounds. “It's a cliché to say that sports unite people, but it's true: I would never have met people from such different demographics anywhere else. Some were with the revolution and some were against it; there were affluent people from upper-class backgrounds and people who were from the working class; a mix of doctors, engineers, students, refugees. All these different walks of life in this one little microcosm, that fascinated me.”

But as the revolution gave way to a bloody civil war, the hopeful feelings she encountered on her first visits quickly dissipated. Arebi's film also took a new turn, moving with its subjects. “In the beginning, people really wanted to tell their stories”, Arebi says. “Everyone was very open to being filmed because the country was gripped by this beautiful new idea of freedom and hope. As the situation became more complicated, I had to adapt how I filmed and be more sensitive to the conflict. Not fight against it but move with it, in a way, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to make a film.”