When photographer-filmmaker Avantika Meattle attended the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris as a spectator, she expected the thrill of sport to sweep her away. What shocked her wasn’t the spectacle of the Games, but the silence in her own head every time she saw an Indian athlete on the ground. “I didn’t know our players,” she says. “Beyond Neeraj Chopra and Manika Batra, I didn’t know many.” That mix of guilt and curiosity became the spark for Champion Story, an eight-part documentary series that aims to introduce viewers to India’s athletes through intimate, short portraits.
The first instalment focuses on four national-level women boxers — Minakshi Hooda, Parveen Hooda, Saweety Boora and Preeti Pawar — released on YouTube, coinciding with the World Boxing Cup Finals 2025 in Noida in November.
Small stories, big lives
Meattle is no stranger to the camera. Her photography and filmmaking experience of over 15 years lean towards bold, textured visuals inspired by classics such as Raging Bull. She has previously assisted on Bollywood projects like Veer-Zaara and Dostana with Yash Raj Films and Dharma Productions, but in Champion Story, she has moved into the dust, sweat, and unpolished landscapes of rural Haryana.
“I didn’t want clean frames,” she says. “The boxer’s world is raw, gritty. The visuals had to reflect that.” Her eye for composition and light turns village gyms and small homes into striking frames without beautifying or erasing their reality. Her camera follows the athletes as they train in their homes, on village roads and backyards. “I didn’t want to only show SAI facilities,” she says. “I wanted to show where they are born, their houses, their parents — the real story.”
Work of trust
Meattle didn’t walk in with a crew expecting instant access. She stayed with the families to spend time with them. “If I walked in like a city filmmaker demanding ‘shots’, they wouldn’t have opened up,” she says. “I had to be part of their journey, part of the house.”
This process led to moments of unexpected vulnerability. In the film featuring Rohtak boxer and 2022 Asian champion Parveen Hooda, the athlete breaks down while speaking about her 2023 whereabouts ban (failure to file her whereabouts during a certain period of time) and the difficult year that followed. She tears up, wipes her face, then laughs through the emotion. Meattle didn’t interrupt. “When someone trusts you enough to be vulnerable, you honour that moment,” she says. “You don’t push, you don’t ask more questions. You let them be.” For Meattle, creating safe spaces for her subjects to be able to comfortably talk is an important aspect, which led her to spend time with the athlete, to be comfortable enough to talk about what she has been through.
She, however, wasn’t looking to make sympathy-driven narratives. In the film on Minakshi Hooda, a 24-year-old gold medallist whose father drives an auto, she deliberately avoided shooting the typical ‘auto-driver father’ scenes often used to create emotional impact. “I didn’t want their lives reduced to sob stories. I wanted to give her dignity,” she says. “He mentioned it himself, but I didn’t want to show him driving.”
Challenges behind the lens
Even beyond trust-building, the filming came with its own hurdles. Language was one: many families struggled with Hindi, so she often used a family member mid-interview for translation so the athlete could speak freely. Training spaces was another; they don’t allow retakes or elaborate lighting — even a stray beam can distract a boxer and risk injury. “We had to be invisible,” she says. “Imagine filming punches flying past your face and still keeping the camera steady.”
Each film in the series runs between six and nine minutes. But the raw footage ran into hours — long conversations, daily routines, practice sessions, family life. “Every second matters,” she says. The decision to create separate short portraits rather than one long documentary was deliberate. “I wanted each athlete to have her own space. Each woman. Each journey. When we go to the Olympics, we should know their names.”
Staying with the families made her more aware of the responsibilities these young athletes carry. “When we were all eating, I realised the mother had to feed seven people that day,” she recalls. “It humbles you. They have so little, yet they remain so focused.”
The project is entirely self-funded — travel, crew, equipment and post-production. The Boxing Federation of India supported her with access and permissions, but the financial risk was hers alone. “I didn’t think twice,” she says. “After the first film, I knew I had to keep going.”
Though this season focuses on boxing, Meattle’s vision goes beyond. She hopes to explore skiing in Kashmir, football, hockey and other sports that remain outside the spotlight on cricket. “I want to go where the stories are still hidden,” she says.
In the end, Champion Story is a reminder that India’s sporting greatness isn’t limited to medals and prime-time discussions. “These athletes have courage and discipline that can inspire a generation,” Meattle says. “All we need to do is look in their direction.”
This article is written by Adithi Reena Ajith