Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Tennis rackets became political weapons in 1973, and Battle of the Sexes turns that collision of sport and social change into a sharp, character-driven drama.
What is Battle of the Sexes about?
Billie Jean King has just helped launch a breakaway women's tour after fighting for equal prize money, and her growing profile as an athlete and as a woman quietly falling for hairdresser Marilyn Barnett puts her under a spotlight she never fully chose. Across the net, retired champion and inveterate gambler Bobby Riggs sees an opportunity: a televised exhibition match pitting a self-styled male chauvinist against the top-ranked woman in the game. What starts as a publicity stunt snowballs into a cultural flashpoint, watched by tens of millions, that forces both players and the country to reckon with what a simple game of tennis has come to represent.
Cast & crew
Emma Stone plays King with restraint and steel, letting the character's private uncertainty coexist with her public resolve, while Steve Carell finds the comic bravado and genuine insecurity underneath Riggs's showman act. Andrea Riseborough, Sarah Silverman, and Bill Pullman round out a supporting cast that captures the tour organizers, sponsors, and skeptics circling the match.
Context & significance
Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, known for grounding big social moments in intimate human behavior, use period detail and archival texture to recreate a match that briefly stopped a nation. The film treats the 1973 showdown less as a sports story than as a snapshot of how quickly attitudes toward gender and fairness were shifting.
Where & how to watch
Battle of the Sexes streams on K-Time with Farsi dubbing and subtitles, so viewers can follow King and Riggs's story in the language they're most comfortable with. The page is free to browse; watching the film itself just needs a K-Time account login, inside an interface built for the Persian-speaking diaspora.