Description:

Professors Laura Brueck and Ivy Wilson, co-directors of the Race, Class, and Colorism Project, host a screening of The Workers Cup, followed by a discussion with director Adam Sobel.

Adam Sobel is a filmmaker who has produced and directed projects in 15 countries and made TV and journalism for The Guardian, BBC, CNN, and others. Sobel lived in Doha, Qatar for five years before relocating to Chicago. While in Doha, he served as an industry advisor to Northwestern University in Qatar students.

The Workers Cup premiered on Opening Night of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and continues to play at Film Festivals around the world.

The film goes inside the labor camps of Qatar, where African and Asian migrant workers building the facilities of the 2022 World Cup competed in a football tournament of their own: The Workers Cup.

The Workers Cup is a feature-length documentary giving voice to the men who are laboring to build sport’s greatest stage. Sixty percent of Qatar’s total population are laborers. From India, Nepal, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and, increasingly from Africa, some of the world’s poorest people are working the lowest level jobs to ensure the World Cup can be hosted in the world’s richest country.  

Ultimately our own complicated relationship with sport is revealed, as we see its power to united and divide society by turns.