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The Workers Cup (15*) + ScreenTalk

Part of: Human Rights Watch Film Festival

The Workers Cup

With unprecedented access to FIFA’s 2022 World Cup stadium construction sites and labour camps in Qatar, The Workers Cup follows a group of the 1.6 million migrant workers preparing for the event.

In the shadows of the controversial building sites, the men enthusiastically train to compete in a football tournament of their own: The Workers Cup. Exposing long work hours for scant salaries, limited freedom of movement, and harsh living conditions in isolated labour camps, this documentary explores universal themes of ambition, aspiration, sport, and masculinity, as the protagonists wrangle hope, meaning, and opportunity out of their extremely precarious circumstances.

Official Selection, Sundance Film Festival 2017

'Insightful and moving, this film shows the inherent unfairness of young men from the world’s poorest countries essentially giving up their lives and leaving their families to build vanity projects in the world’s richest countries.'

Nicholas McGeehan, former Researcher, Middle East and North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch

This screening is followed by a discussion with producer Rosie Garthwaite.

UK 2017 Dir Adam Sobel 89 min

* This film has been locally classified by the Barbican Centre

Please arrive promptly at the advertised start time

Proof of ID may be requested on entry to films, in compliance with BBFC ratings

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Barbican Cinema 2