Prime Video’s Ambitious Sports Documentary Is A Must-See For WNBA Fans

Fresh off a world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, Power of the Dream will land on Prime Video on June 18, making director and producer Dawn Porter’s latest documentary easily accessible to audiences. And, as any long-time WNBA fan (or player) will tell you, media accessibility is crucial. Powerful stories, like thrilling basketball games, are meant to be seen. It sounds cliché to say, but Power of the Dream is required viewing — and not just for sports fans.

Best known for directing and producing documentaries about revolutionary activists, passed-over chapters in history, and little-known heroes, Porter (Gideon’s Army, John Lewis: Good Trouble) brings her keen sense of storytelling to the rather ambitious Power of the Dream. At its core, the sports documentary chronicles the empowering story of how professional women’s basketball players leveraged their WNBA platform to rally behind now-Senator Raphael Warnock — and take down former Atlanta Dream co-owner and former Senator Kelly Loeffler.

Power of the Dream is also tasked with giving a brief history of the W, which turns 27-years-old this season. Founded in 1996, the NBA-backed league was intended to capitalize on the women’s basketball fervor sweeping the nation in the wake of both the UConn women’s team clinching its first NCAA championship in 1995 and the USA’s gold medal win at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.

Power Of The Dream Is An Ambitious Documentary That Spotlights 27 Years Of WNBA Activism

Dawn Porter’s film illustrates how the fight for change is woven into the very fabric of the WNBA

Given the documentary’s ambitious scope — it needed to showcase pivotal moments in the league’s history and reiterate that activism was always a part of the WNBA’s fabric — it’s most reminiscent of Porter’s award-winning Trapped. The 2016 documentary, which centers on the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, has a similarly sweeping scope. However, with both Trapped and Power of the Dream, Porter is able to tell a comprehensive history and spotlight a specific present example.

Porter’s Trilogy Films joined forces with several other entities to craft the documentary, including TOGETHXR — a media company founded by Alex Morgan, Chloe Kim, Simone Manuel, and 4-time WNBA champion Sue Bird. “As female athletes, [we’re] judged based on everything except the game we’re playing,” Bird says in the documentary. “It’s never just been about basketball.”

While the WNBA’s league-wide organizing around getting Warnock elected serves as a culmination of the players’ nearly three decades of activism, that story is only a small sliver of what makes Power of the Dream both urgent and compelling. Punctuated by insight from sports journalists and commentators Jemele Hill and Holly Rowe, Power of the Dream gives some of the league’s biggest change-makers another opportunity to speak out.

It works so well because these athlete-activists, like WNBA champion Nneka Ogwumike, the President of the WNBA Players Association, are also the ones leading the charge in archival footage. The documentary also makes a great case for an entire film centered on the inspiring, yet deeply humble Ogwumike, who has channeled her fellow players’ passion for equal rights, fair compensation, and social justice into history-making change.

Power Of The Dream Spotlights The WNBA’s Long-Held Clarity Of Purpose

The players of the WNBA refuse to be underestimated

The W’s players not only understand their unique position to create change, but are deeply aware of the work that needs to be done to make change actually happen, as exemplified by the WNBA’s 2020 season dedication to #SayHerName, Black Lives Matter, and Breonna Taylor. Before Colin Kaepernick knelt, full WNBA teams, like the Maya Moore-led Minnesota Lynx, were putting their careers on the line to bolster the Black Lives Matter movement, and speak out against police brutality and the murders of Black men like Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.

As Hill points out, it was a historic moment — and people still fail to recognize the WNBA’s consistent activism. Reflecting on the league’s Black women, queer players, and genderfluid individuals, sports agent Lindsay Kagawa Colas points out that, “Each one of those players wakes up every day and is inherently political.” Point being, for WNBA players, there’s no separating identity, sports, and political activism, because of the social landscape at large.

From championing Black women and LGBTQ+ folks to becoming role models in the fight for equal pay, the players of the WNBA have long proven those who underestimate them wrong. Despite its vast scope, the intimate and always welcoming Power of the Dream manages to feel both timely and timeless.

Power of the Dream premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It streams exclusively on Prime Video June 18.

Power of the Dream is a new documentary film about the empowering and unlikely true story of how a group of professional women’s basketball players took on a WNBA team owner and rallied behind now-Senator Raphael Warnock, forever changing the landscape of their sport and the course of U.S. politics.

Pros

• The documentary is simultaneously intimate and timeless
• Power of the Dream boldly highlights the WNBA players’ activism outside of basketball
• The film is powerful in its portrayal of the WNBA and how it’s been shaped over the years
• It covers multiple issues and a long history quite seamlessly