Can We Kick It? Heads to Kansas City

Outside the Soccer Room:

The documentary’s next stop brings its conversation about culture, access and American soccer to the Kansas City FilmFest International.

By CWKI Journal

The journey continues west.

On Sunday, September 20, Can We Kick It? will screen at the Kansas City FilmFest International, bringing the documentary—and the questions at the center of it—to another American city with a deepening relationship to the game.

After screenings in Harlem, Baltimore, Charlotte and Philadelphia, Kansas City represents something slightly different.

It puts Can We Kick It? outside the soccer room.

And that matters.

Outside the soccer room

American soccer has spent years talking to itself.

The same conferences. The same organizations. The same industry conversations about participation, development, marketing and growth.

Culture does not operate that way.

The people who can change how America experiences soccer do not necessarily work in soccer.

They are filmmakers, artists, parents, teachers, musicians, journalists, entrepreneurs, coaches and community leaders. Sometimes they are simply people who see something on a screen that makes them reconsider what they thought they knew.

That is part of what makes the film-festival circuit important for Can We Kick It?

A documentary can enter rooms that a soccer presentation cannot.

It can ask uncomfortable questions without becoming another industry panel. It can introduce audiences to history they may not know. And it can connect Pelé, Howard University, hip-hop, neighborhood fields, development systems, Black creativity and the future of American soccer in the same conversation.

Kansas City provides another room for that conversation.

Two sports. A shared question.

Can We Kick It? will share its screening program with the short documentary The Bridge.

On the surface, the films come from different games.

One looks at soccer. The other is rooted in baseball.

But sports are rarely just about sports.

They are also about the places where people learn to play. The adults who create opportunities. The communities that preserve traditions. The institutions that decide where resources go. And the young person who needs somebody to build a bridge between talent and opportunity.

That connection feels particularly appropriate alongside Can We Kick It?

The film makes a simple argument:

The talent is here. The system isn’t.

The larger question is what America chooses to build around that talent.

Soccer is present. But who belongs?

Kansas City is an interesting place to ask that question.

Soccer has a significant presence there. The city was one of the American host markets for the 2026 World Cup, and the infrastructure, attention and investment surrounding the sport are impossible to miss.

But Can We Kick It? asks audiences to look beyond whether soccer is present.

It asks something more complicated:

Who feels that the game belongs to them?

Those are not the same questions.

A city can have professional teams, stadiums, tournaments and major events, while communities within that same city remain disconnected from the pathways into the sport.

That distinction sits at the heart of Can We Kick It?

The future of American soccer will not be determined only by how many people watch the game.

It will also be determined by who gets to play it, shape it, coach it, tell its stories and see themselves inside it.

The conversation travels

Each stop on the Can We Kick It? journey has placed the film in front of a different audience.

And that is increasingly becoming part of the story itself.

A film that began with questions about Black America and soccer is traveling into theaters and cultural spaces where those questions can intersect with larger conversations about education, economics, identity, community and opportunity.

Some people will enter the theater because they love soccer.

Others may enter because they love documentary film.

Some may come because they recognize their own community in the questions being asked.

That mixture is the point.

Can We Kick It? may begin with soccer.

But the conversation has always been bigger than the game.

CAN WE KICK IT?
Kansas City FilmFest International
Sunday, September 20, 2026
12:00 PM CDT
AMC Ward Parkway 14

The talent is here. The system isn’t.