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Skateboarding burst out of its American underground origins into a global subculture in the late-90s and early-2000s. Despite skateboarding's ever-increasing popularity and the arrival of 'Skater Girls' in the late 2000s and early 2010s, however, the scene remained predominantly male and intersectional safe spaces for women of colour within the already niche sphere of female skaters remained rare.
Skater Uktis, a worldwide Muslim female skater crew, is trying to change that. Co-founded by Nusaiba Al-Azami, Amna Zaman, and Hafsah Mohammed just before the COVID pandemic, the collective is trying to bring together Muslim girls across the world over a shared love of skateboarding, both online and in public spaces like community skate parks. The Skater Uktis project now spans over 20 countries including Norway, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Australia, USA, Canada, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Tunisia, Iraq, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Thailand.
What sets the Skater Uktis crew apart from other girls' crews is the group's refusal to tokenise their Muslim identity. The collective deliberately avoids being defined purely as 'Muslim women on skateboards' or presenting skateboarding as an 'escape' from Islam. Instead, they define themselves as an “organisation that merges the worlds of Islam and skateboarding to foster personal development and cultivate exceptional leaders”.
Recently, this phenomenal project has been the subject of London-based filmmaker Mehek Azmathulla's documentary short film 'Skater Uktis'. The film premiered at BFI Southbank as part of the Dialled in ‘Unbound Archives’ series in March 2024. More recently, the film was screened at BAFTA and Academy Award-qualifying festivals globally, including the London Indian Film Festival 2024, Aesthetica Film Festival 2024, Tasveer Film Festival and Market 2024, and the Paris Skateboarding and Surf Film Festival (exhibition) 2024.
Through conversations with four key members of the Skater Uktis community, Azmathulla's short film explores the importance and necessity of this global sisterhood within the skateboarding community, highlighting how this inclusive support system extends beyond the skate park into other, broader aspects of their life.
It shows viewers how these bonds, formed over a shared faith and love for skateboarding, help these young Muslim women navigate challenging situations such as hostile encounters at the skate park. It also shows us the positive impact of seeing Muslim women of colour excel at something as intricate and relatively niche as skateboarding.
In addition to all of this, the film emphasises the lived experience of facing societal pressures regarding appropriate behaviour and acceptable activities that many young Muslim women across the world share, and shows us how skateboarding provides them a release from these prejudices.
Skater Uktis is a joyous glimpse into the world of skateboarding, as seen through the eyes of the eponymous globe-spanning Muslim girls' skate crew, as they tenderly redefine what it means to be a 'skater'. The film is self-funded by Indian-born, London-based director/producer Mehek Azmathulla and was made with a majority female crew.
