Brazilian film-maker Lillah Halla has created a punchy drama about sisterhood and queer solidarity in the face of bigoted Bolsonaro-era attitudes. It’s an engaging watch, but it’s let down a bit by the convenient ending facilitated by a slightly unfocused melodramatic finale.

The setting is São Paulo, where a youth volleyball team is poised to win a championship. The star player is 17-year-old Sofía (Ayomi Domenica Dias), who is herself about to clinch a life-changing sports scholarship. (The “power alley” of the title means a thrilling cross-court shot that travels from one corner of the court to the opponents’ corner; the film’s original title, Levante, means “rise up”.) But Sofía is pregnant, which could change everything – and there are serious legal obstacles to getting abortions in Brazil.

Rashly, Sofía approaches a clinic that appears to offer terminations, but it is a front run by the religious right whose real purpose is to pressure women not to go through with it, having allowed them to make declarations of intent which are against the law – and then to blackmail them by threatening to go to the police with their details. So Sofía, as well as all the other pressures she is under, must now face the spiteful mob harassment from a radical sect who think that they are doing the Lord’s work in menacing a teenage girl and making sure that her volleyball dreams are publicly ruined, an attractively spectacular way of deterring any other women thinking of doing the same thing.

It’s a nightmarish situation, a Handmaid’s Tale taken from everyday life. The only people Sofía can really count on are her teammates, and the movie leans away from the tense and thriller-ish potential of the story towards her own emotional siege. It conjures a rather contrived denouement that’s a little bit glib, but features a strong performance from Dias as Sofía.

• Power Alley (Levante) is in UK and Irish cinemas from 29 November.