LEWISTON - A short documentary about a team of 8-year-old girls - playing soccer and winning games when they face the boys - will be screened next week for a pair of local audiences.

Director Jenny Mackenzie, who also coached the Utah team, will accompany the film to Monday's free 6 p.m. screening at Leavitt Area High School in Turner. Another showing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Friday, May 9, at the Lewiston Public Library.

The aim of "Kick Like a Girl" is to teach a gentle lesson, much like what the boys learned when they first took the field against the girls' "Mighty Cheetahs."

"The boys are really quite heroic," Mackenzie said Wednesday in a phone interview from Salt Lake City. "They walk away from the experience with respect for these girls as athletes and human beings."

The girls' own play demanded the attention.

In their first year, the little ones were unbeaten. In the second year, against teams one year older, they remained unbeaten.

They needed to learn the lessons that go with losing, Mackenzie said. And they needed better opponents.

So they joined the boys' division.

A social worker turned film student began documenting the third season at her mother's insistence. The result is a sweet-natured film, alternating between game play and interviews with, parents, boys and girls.

"I was impressed at how articulate they were," Mackenzie said.

On camera, the girls talked about what it meant to them to play the boys, to be taken seriously as competitive opponents. Then, the boys spoke about losing to girls and their growing respect for them.

"The boys in the film get it," Mackenzie said. "It's often the parents that have much greater difficulty with this sort of thing."

The film includes catcalls from men to their sons saying, "They're only girls."

The movie premiered at the Santa Barbara Film Festival in California in February.

"People went crazy for it," Mackenzie said. "Audiences of all ages are eating it up."

Showings in Maine are being sponsored by several groups, including the Maine Women's Fund and Hardy Girls Healthy Women.

"I watched the film and loved it," said Brianna McCabe, the community outreach coordinator for the Maine Women's Fund.

The fund plans to run several of the screenings and Mackenzie plans to attend several, including the Turner showing. Writer-producer Jennifer Jordan plans to accompany the film at every stop, mostly to introduce the movie and answer questions afterward.

"What I hope people take away from this is a sense of the value of fair and honest play between boys and girls," Jordan said.

It's also a sweet, entertaining film. There's a message, but it's done with a light touch.

"This is not agenda journalism," Jordan said.