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Christina Linardatou: A Boxing Champion Conquers the World

Christina Linardatou is the first ever world-champion professional boxer based in Greece. Half Greek, half Dominican, she grew up in a country that did not accept her. In 2012, when female boxers were allowed to compete in the Olympics, she met her coach and later husband, with whom she went against all odds, travelled the world, and wrote history in professional boxing.

Ιn boxing, there are fighters who start their careers coming from Olympic Games glory. Even before they begin their professional careers, they sign with the most famous promoters and fight in big venues with TV coverage. But there are also fighters who rise up from nowhere, building their names in small venues, in other people’s hometowns, looked down upon and unheard off, fighting as underdogs with little else than their own faith in themselves and their skills.

If this is a tough way up for male boxers, it is almost impossible one for women fighters. Christina Linardatou Duran came as an immigrant in Greece from the Dominican Republic when she was just a kid. She was used to being the outsider, the foreigner, the underdog. But she had faith in herself and made others believe in her too. They saw the talent and she put her work in. This story is her rise to fame, the rollercoaster ride from being a girl from nowhere to becoming one of female boxing’s most feared world champions.

As a director, I had the rare opportunity to follow this amazing journey even before her first professional fight, when no one could even imagine the success story her career would become. But we were also exposed to the unseen side of professional boxing, the fights that take place beyond fight night, and the real adventures a person has to endure even before stepping inside the ring.

This film is dedicated to Christina’s newborn son as she goes against all odds to continue her boxing-champion career and being a loving dedicated mother at the same time.

DIRECTED BY
Dimitris Delinikolas

Dimitris Delinikolas is a film and digital media director and producer. He studied animation and directed a first master’s degree in film directing in the United Kingdom.

He then completed a second master’s degree at the Athens School of Fine Arts. In 2021 he completed his PhD at the Kapodistrian University of Athens studying the topics of transmedia storytelling and participatory film production. His PhD film and transmedia project “Metacities” was exhibited in The Blender Art Gallery in Athens in January 2024.

He founded the company “emptyfilm” (www.emptyfilm.com) focusing on producing cinema, new media, and transmedia narratives. He has been working as a commercials director since 2010 having won awards for his commercial films. He is teaching post-production, cinematography, and animation at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in the school of Cinema and Digital Arts.(www.delinikolas.com)

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