Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibilityGive Me the Ball! | 2026 Sundance Film Festival
Accessibility

Premieres

Give Me the Ball!

sd_star_fav_icon
United States2025101 minEnglish
Give Me the Ball!

World champion tennis trailblazer Billie Jean King has had a game-changing impact on culture and sports. Rare archive and candid interviews with Billie Jean and those closest to her reveal how one woman put changing the world ahead of saving herself.

+ More

World champion tennis trailblazer Billie Jean King has had a game-changing impact on culture and sports. Rare archive and candid interviews with Billie Jean and those closest to her reveal how one woman put changing the world ahead of saving herself.

The story of professional women’s sports could not be told without Billie Jean King. Her status is so iconic, some might lose sight of the real human being — her struggles, her flaws, and her all-consuming, competitive drive. In fighting for equity for herself and others, King was uncompromising, to the point of subordinating her personal well-being by hiding her sexual orientation and eating disorders. Directors Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff present Billie Jean King in full, in her own words, and with archival footage that brings the dark times and indelible victories to life again. With refreshing honesty and the hard-won perspective of having lived through it all, Give Me the Ball! is an electric portrait of one of the greatest of all time. — SS

Available in person only. 

PremieresAll FeaturesBiographyLGBTQ+ StoriesWomen-Centered StoriesNonfictionAudio DescriptionClosed CaptionOpen CaptionU.S. Only- less

Credits

  • Director(s)

    Liz Garbus

    Elizabeth Wolff

  • Producers

    Liz Garbus

    Elizabeth Wolff

    Dominic Crossley-Holland

    Dan Cogan

    Chris James

    Gentry Kirby

  • Executive Producers

    Jon Bardin

    Tommy Coriale

    Louis Mole

    Isabel Davis

    Jay de Andrade

    Ben Lampkin

    Heather Anderson

    Marsha Cooke

    Brian Lockhart

    Burke Magnus

  • Co-Executive Producer

    Seth Abraham

  • Edited by

    Joshua L. Pearson

  • Director of Photography

    Thorsten Thielow

    Tony Hardmon

  • Music by

    Laura Karpman

  • Archival Producers

    Helen R. Russell

    Andrew Mayz

  • Associate Producer

    Charlotte Zonis

  • Contact

    Jon Bardin

    jon@storysyndicate.com

Meet the Artist

Panelist Name

Liz Garbus

    Liz Garbus is a two-time Emmy Award–winning and two-time Academy Award–nominated filmmaker. She has helmed celebrated genre-defying documentaries and premium drama series as a director and executive producer under her company Story Syndicate.

    Panelist Name

    Elizabeth Wolff

      Elizabeth Wolff is drawn to the ways stories from the past help us make sense of the world today. Named one of DOC NYC’s 2023 “40 Under 40,” she specializes in adapting biography, memoir, and political histories into documentaries and has collaborated with Liz Garbus on several acclaimed projects.

      You May Also Like

      Premieres
      sd_banner_img

      Once Upon A Time In Harlem

      FilmUnFillFavIcon

      A decade after his death, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves has one last trick up his sleeve with what he considered the most important event he captured on film: a 1972 party he engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.

      (1hr 40mins)
      Premieres
      sd_banner_img

      The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

      FilmUnFillFavIcon

      A father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with the AI insanity, exploring the existential dangers and stunning promise of this technology that humanity has created.

      (1hr 44mins)
      Premieres
      sd_banner_img

      Jane Elliott Against the World

      FilmUnFillFavIcon

      A rural Iowa schoolteacher becomes a national voice against racism after leading a controversial 1968 lesson in discrimination with her all-white third-grade class. Now nearly 90, she refuses to hold back amid today’s fights about race, history, and power after a lifetime of speaking out.

      (1hr 39mins)
      Premieres
      sd_banner_img

      Time and Water

      FilmUnFillFavIcon

      Facing the death of his country’s glaciers and the loss of his beloved grandparents, Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason turns his archives into a time capsule to hold what is slipping away — family, memory, time, and water.

      (1hr 33mins)

      Media Sponsors

      Sponsor
      Sponsor
      Sponsor
      Sponsor
      Sponsor

      Media Sponsors

      Media Sponsors

      Media Sponsors
      Media Sponsors
      Media Sponsors
      Media Sponsors
      Media Sponsors