Sunday Matinee: The Workers Cup [Film]

“In 2022 Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world – the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far away from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, migrant workers from Africa and Asia toil exceedingly long hours for scant salaries, and live isolated in labor camps which are by law kept outside city limits. By day they sweat to build the World Cup, but at night they compete in the “workers welfare” football tournament, playing in the same stadiums that will one day host the world’s greatest players.”

The very phrase I think of when I recollect on what I witnessed in this harrowing documentary, will always be “awe-inspiring”. Sadly, it has been my personal experience to learn that this is all far too common. The Workers Cup is a film that simply documents occurrences and atrocities that have been occurring throughout the world for so many years. Gigantic corporations and national governments (yes, the U.S. included in a HUGE way) have always found ways to exploit individuals from low-income backgrounds in order to have large scale projects (or operations) be completed whilst saving huge sums of profits by simply not considering these groups of people who flock to their projects not as human beings, but as “total man hours.” It’s a disturbing process, and can rightfully be argued that it is indeed modern day slavery.

There is something incredibly unique about The Workers Cup that has left me mesmerized. The use of a staged event like a football tournament in order to promote the “well-being” of the workers staged and trapped in these construction camps is saddening, to say the least. I could not help but draw modern day comparison to the acts of slave fighting portrayed in a film like Django Unchained, or the midnight dance routines put on my drunken slave masters in 12 Years A Slave. While not as directly oppressive, these are modern times and those at the top have found new and back door means of oppressing the poor who simply want to feel like humans. But where would we be as a society if we treated people fairly, refused to entrap them in labor camps where they are barely making enough money to provide for a family thousands of miles away? Where would we be as a world? Well, it is suffice to say that a few thousand people who hold the world’s wealth would not be very happy, so we must comply to their bullshit demands. This is reality. It is a sad reality. While the proles have the numbers, the wealthy have the means to protect themselves from the poor, and always will.

My only hope is that somebody will see The Workers Cup and actually be shocked by what they see. I can only imagine the plethora of people out there who have no idea what it entails to employ the construction of such high scale sporting events, or to have the back support to continue unending wars against nouns. Although, as I previously stated, there will be nothing done about it, and these conditions are never going to change, it is important to enlightened people to the atrocities of the world so that they may be able to look at the travesties and refrain from participating. Sadly, that is about all that our fellow proles of the world can really do.

Alas, the film is again, awe-inspiring. Each “employee” showcased in this film is an admirable one. They want nothing more that to live, provide…..and play football! They simply want to feel happiness and joy in something, when it seems as though there is only darkness all around them. I can not recommend The Workers Cup enough

For more information about the film, including dates, cities and theaters, go to TheWorkersCupFilm.com