"Las Diablillas" is a relevant entertainment film because it celebrates a sports culture different from what we see everyday on TV.

Through our film, we championed the Diablillas' accomplishments as athletes and supported their strides to change their community's thinking on traditional gender roles.

Las Diablillas (The Little Devils) are a softball team from Hondzonot, Mexico who began playing the sport as a way to have fun, create space for themselves, and also challenge traditional gender roles in their indigenous community.

This short documentary introduces Las Diablillas to the world, not just as the Mayan women who play softball barefoot and in their traditional dresses (huipiles), but as a collective voice that highlights their individual journeys by discussing who supported and challenged them along the way. The film explores the family traditions these women have built, the trauma they’ve broken, and the aspirations they have for future generations of women.

The objective of the film is to celebrate the Diablillas' courage, dreams, and what they've accomplished in their community.

Baseball is a global sport and 30% of professional players are Latino. Their heritage, influence and stories have a tremendous impact on the sport.

With this film, we aimed to expand outside of baseball and celebrate the story of a resilient softball team that is inspiring the next generation of women and athletes. Sports know no boundaries and often build communities in unexpected ways. The Diablillas are the perfect example of just that.

The creative idea was to create a montage with a heartbeat.

Our goal was to have as few talking heads as possible and let the Diablillas narrate their collective story as Mayan women in their native language so they could all comfortably and freely express themselves, while still presenting individual stories and challenges of three of their team leaders.

Their story of resilience and soul was captured through our 16mm film camera to give viewers a feeling of truth and transparency. With Hondzonot as another character in this film, we wanted spectators to feel one with nature to understand the Diablillas' way of life at their homes, their field, and sacred indigenous land.

MLB and our agency began working on a series called Fuera del Ballpark, a docu series focused on celebrating baseball subcultures and untold stories throughout Latin America, in the Spring of 2022. We did in-depth research and presented batches of stories for MLB to consider, including “Las Diablillas.”

We quickly proposed director options that would be authentic to the story and began working on a treatment for the film. Filming took place over three days in July 2022 in Hondzonot, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

Post-production began in early August and the film launched on October 13th, 2022. Full versions of the film were posted on MLB’s YouTube channel, MLB and Las Mayores (MLB’s Spanish-language account) Facebook Watch pages, MLB.tv, MLB.com and trailers were shared on all MLB and Las Mayores social media accounts.

The film was released globally and is still live on all distribution channels mentioned above.

Through this film, we confronted those that discredit the Diablillas’ courage and dreams by amplifying their talent on the field and their resilience as women.

Viewers from across the globe resonated with the women’s story and quickly chimed in via comments to share their admiration for the Diablillas and proudly celebrate and share photos of their own local women’s teams.

The story garnered 16.5M impressions and more than 5M total views.

The Diablillas also embroidered a jersey for Chicago Cubs pitcher Manuel Rodríguez, a native of the Riviera Maya. He received the gift before a game in Chicago during Hispanic Heritage Month and was moved after seeing the women in his own family reflected in the Diablillas.

This film celebrates the Diablillas' courage to play sports when members of their community criticized them for it. Their commitment to their team earned them respect and turned skeptics into supporters.

We show the women remaining true to themselves and their heritage, taking a different approach to the sport of softball, like playing in traditional Mayan dresses and barefoot, but still performing at the same level as other teams who use traditional equipment.

Their story inspires and encourages other women's teams to keep fighting for space in their communities and to do it in a way that makes them proud.

Throughout Latin America, women are expected to perform household duties before anything else and traditional gender roles remain in place, especially in smaller communities like Hondzonot.

By challenging the norms and exploring an outlet that brought the Diablillas pride and happiness, the team initially drew criticism from others in town who feared the women would be less attentive to their families. However, as their name suggests, these women are rebels and have proved skeptics wrong, now drawing large crowds to their games.

Their actions are inspiring other women from nearby communities to fight for their rights to have fun, practice enjoyable activities, and create spaces for themselves.

After the film’s release on social media, men and women chimed in with comments of admiration and support for the Diablillas’ pioneering accomplishments.