Naysayers have for decades made the claim that professional women’s sporting leagues in Canada just do not work, and are not worth trying to build.

But the reality was that until the creation of the Northern Super League (NSL), no one had really tried to create a professional women’s sporting league not based on a charity model, said Diana Matheson, co-founder of the NSL.

For two years, she worked alongside other players to break down barriers and to bring something new sporting fans.

That incredible story that saw Matheson retire from Olympic sports to create Canada’s first league was the subject of the new documentary from Emmy-nominated and Canadian Screen Award-winning documentarian Michèle Hozer, which had it’s Alberta premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival on Sept. 23.

“I hope it educates a bit in terms of the history of women’s sport, history of women’s soccer, some of the barriers that have been there, and a little bit, you know, around what the industry is and why this time in history is so different,” said Matheson.

“It’s really a turning point in the industry in general. It’s an industry that’s just getting started, and Canada’s world-class at so hopefully fans can learn about that side of it and film as well.”

The Pitch offers an unparalleled look into what it took, and takes, to create a sporting league in North America.

“My niece asked me the other day, my four-year-old niece, how do you build a sport league? I said, ‘I have no idea.’ So it’s a little of you get to see the journey and the stress and the work and the barriers that go into it. I still don’t know how we did it. In some ways, it’s a bit surreal, but yeah, hopefully fans can come and take away something from it,” said Matheson.

Hozer herself said that the film was something that rarely happens in the work of documentarians: A story that didn’t begin with a clearly defined end, and that working out wasn’t assured.

“It’s interesting because normally you’re not with a project that long or you’re trying to tell a backstory. You’re not following it as they go,” she said.

“You’re hoping that your ending is that opening game. But what if it doesn’t happen right? Because it was hard for Diana.”

When she took on the project, Hozer asked herself what she wasn’t getting about sports stories.

“I thought, okay, sports. There’s tons of money, it’s going to be an easy story. And then I meet Diana, and I thought ‘why is a former player building this? What am I not getting?’ That was the sort of driving question in the film: Why is it that these former players have to take it upon themselves to create a league here,” she said.

“These are women who brought home medals, not one, but three medals, right? Like, what am I not getting here? And you see it’s a real David and Goliath story.”

Sports as a way to bring people together

Hozer said the film shows that sport has a way to bring people together.

“There’s something that happens when these women get together and create something,” she said.

“You see it embedded in or symbolized in their 2012 performance. You know, they had a really bad loss and an injustice happened to them, and it could have crushed them. What do they do? They took that loss and they rose above it and created something even better. And I think that sports does that. It’s inspirational. And I think people are looking for inspiration right now.”

That message was something that Hozer said prompted CIFF to include the documentary as part of their 2025 lineup, even before it was finished.

“I tell you, as an independent filmmaker, to have a festival embrace a film the way CIFF did, the way Brian Owens saw a rough cut of the film not even finished, without an en,d and he just the next day said, ‘we’re in,'” she said.

“It means so much to independent filmmakers, because it’s a launching pad. That screening last night was beyond what we expected.”

She said that the first thing Brian Owens, the Artistic Director for CIFF, told her was that Diana Matheson was the hero we didn’t know we needed.

Having a role model for young women not just as players but as part of the entire sports ecosystem was an important message for the times.

“I think that’s the important thing to see. Yes, they have an opportunity now to dream about being players. There’s a whole ecosystem. You can become that physiotherapist on the field. You can become the referee. I mean, there are so many other opportunities than just being players. Again, it’s here at home, and it’s women,” said Hozer.

“We’ve been griping about the Canadian economy, keeping the money here. Here we are with the NSL… you don’t have to look any further bring your money here.”

The Pitch will be playing next in Vancouver, Montreal Ottawa, Halifax, and Toronto—all homes of NSL teams—as part of the national screening tour. It will be broadcast on TVO on Nov. 9, with additional broadcasts on TSN and RDS in the spring of 2026.