Speed Sisters review – women racers roar around the West Bank

Here is a feelgood documentary about an unlikely subject: a team of car nuts who race their beat-up motors on the West Bank speed rally circuit, and who, as the title indicates, happen to be women. It provides an opportunity to absorb a string of hot-button topics – the Israel-Palestine conflict, women’s status in Arab society, the irresistible lure of competitive sports – in a film that eschews pulpit-bashing and doctrinaire thinking.

We follow the team as they pitch up to a series of race meetings; all, given the confined space available, taking place on small patches of concrete with coned routes. Intra-team tensions inevitably arise, as does the need to face down disapproval from more conservative social elements; at the other end of the scale, the team have to contend with some nasty brushes with the Israeli military. It’s not exactly hard-hitting stuff, and isn’t meant to be, but it spins an entertaining yarn.