The Workers Cup

POV Season 31
  • Feature Film
  • 2018
  • 90 Mins

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 million African and Asian migrant workers. With unprecedented access, The Workers Cup gives voice to the men who are laboring to build sport's grandest stage while competing in a soccer tournament of their own.

More from this film

The Workers Cup: Pay and Recreation

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Clip

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 ...

The Workers Cup: Modern Slavery

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Clip

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 ...

The Workers Cup: Typical Work

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Clip

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 ...

The Workers Cup: Housing

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Clip

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 ...

Trailer | The Workers Cup

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 ...

Based on similar topics

Survivors

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Clip

Through the eyes of Sierra Leonean filmmaker Arthur Pratt, Survivors presents an intimate portrait of his country during the Ebola outbreak, exposing the complexity of the epidemic and the sociopolitical turmoil that lies in its wake. During one of the ...

The Workers Cup

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Clip

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 ...

Singing With Angry Bird

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Jae-Chang Kim runs a children's choir in Pune, India. Although his quick temper earned him the nickname "Angry Bird," he has made significant changes in the lives of the choir children. But skeptical of the practical value of music ...

The Storm Makers

  • Feature Film
  • 2015

Feature Film

Featuring brutally candid testimony, The Storm Makers is a chilling exposé of Cambodia's human trafficking underworld and an eye-opening look at the complex cycle of poverty, despair and greed that fuels this brutal modern slave trade. More than half ...

The Overnighters

  • Feature Film
  • 2015

Feature Film

Chasing the American dream, thousands of workers flock to a North Dakota town where the oil business is booming. But instead of well-paying jobs, many find slim work prospects and a severe housing shortage. Pastor Jay Reinke converts his church ...

Hotel 22

  • Short Film
  • 2015

Short Film

The Line 22 is a bus route that runs 24 hours in Silicon Valley. During the day, it is a regular city bus. But by night, it transforms into an unofficial shelter for the homeless. Commonly referred to as Hotel ...

Utopia, Part 3

  • Short Film
  • 2009

Short Film

Is nothing American sacred anymore? The largest mall in the world turns out not to be the famous Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. It's the South China Mall outside of Guangzhou, China. Outdoing the techniques of American consumerism ...

StoryCorps Shorts: Making It

  • Short Film
  • 2014

Short Film

Nineteen-year-old Noe Rueda grew up on Chicago's West Side. He is the oldest of four siblings raised by a single mom. As a boy, Noe watched his family struggle and decided to help. Noe told Alex Fernandez, his high ...

Crisanto Street

  • Short Film
  • 2020

Short Film

In the shadow of Silicon Valley, a hidden community thrives despite difficult circumstances. For one resident, eight-year-old Geovany Cesario, impending change is bittersweet.

Edgecombe

  • Short Film
  • 2020

Short Film

Through the deeply personal truths of three local residents, Edgecombe examines the ways trauma repeats and reinvents itself in rural black communities.

Clash

  • Short Film
  • 2020

Short Film

Clash is a short experimental documentary critiquing the lack of diversity in on-screen representation in the U.K. today.

Muxes

  • Short Film
  • 2020

Short Film

In the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, Mexico, the world is not divided simply into men and women. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call “muxes”—men who consider themselves women ...

Agents of Change

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Agents of Change examines the racial conditions on college campuses across the U.S. in the late 1960’s, focusing on student demands at two seminal protests: San Francisco State in 1968 and Cornell University in 1969. Many of the ...

The Invisible Patients

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Through the story of Jessica Macleod, Ph.D., a dedicated nurse practitioner in Evansville, Indiana, and her four homebound and marginalized patients, The Invisible Patients​ sheds light on some of the most urgent healthcare issues facing our nation today: from ...

Beyond the Wall

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Beyond the Wall​ ​revolves around one central figure, a former prisoner named Louie Diaz, as he works to guide five formerly incarcerated men safely through the minefield of life outside of jail. Too often, prisoner reentry becomes a setup for ...

Random Acts of Legacy

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Filmmaker Ali Kazimi finds a rare cache of deteriorating 16mm home movies spanning from 1936 to 1951, and deftly crafts a story of history and memory in Random Acts of Legacy. The family archive that Kazimi discovers was the work ...

Personal Statement

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Personal Statement follows three Brooklyn high school seniors intent on defying the odds for themselves and their classmates: getting their peers into college. Becoming the very resource they don't have for themselves as peer college counselors, the students star in ...
SVG/POVCreated with Sketch.

Whiteness Project

  • Interactive
  • 2014
Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, understand and experience their race. Whiteness Project conducts interviews with people from all walks of life and localities in which they are asked about ...
SVG/POVCreated with Sketch.

Empire

  • Interactive
  • 2014
The Dutch East and West India Companies once controlled vast trading networks that stretched from the Cape of Good Hope to the Indonesian archipelago, and from New York to South America's Wild Coast. Although they came in pursuit of short-term ...

Big Men

  • Feature Film
  • 2014

Feature Film

Over five years, director Rachel Boynton and her cinematographer film the quest for oil in Ghana by Dallas-based Kosmos. The company develops the country's first commercial oil field, yet its success is quickly compromised by political intrigue and accusations ...

Fallen City

  • Feature Film
  • 2014

Feature Film

In today's go-go China, an old city completely destroyed by a devastating earthquake can be rebuilt — boasting new and improved civic amenities — in an astoundingly quick two years. But, as Fallen City reveals, the journey from the ...

American Revolutionary

  • Feature Film
  • 2014

Feature Film

Grace Lee Boggs, 98, is a Chinese American philosopher, writer, and activist in Detroit with a thick FBI file and a surprising vision of what an American revolution can be. Rooted for 75 years in the labor, civil rights and ...

Last Train Home

  • Feature Film
  • 2011

Feature Film

Every spring, China's cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year in the world’s largest human migration. Last Train Home takes viewers on a heart-stopping journey with ...

POV Shorts (2009)

  • Feature Film
  • 2009
POV presents a one-hour collection of acclaimed documentary shorts by established and emerging filmmakers. Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall (By Sam Green, Carrie Lozano) - If you thought Minnesota's Mall of America was the world's ...

Farewell Ferris Wheel

  • Feature Film
  • 2017

Trailer

Carnivals have a delightful place in the American imagination. But rising expenses and changes in U.S. labor patterns means this national pastime is nearly extinct. Farewell Ferris Wheel is an inside look at the struggles of an industry trying ...

The Hand That Feeds

  • Feature Film
  • 2016

Trailer

At a popular bakery cafe in Manhattan, patrons get served with a smile 24 hours a day. Behind the scenes, some of the undocumented immigrant workers earn far below the minimum wage. Filmed at the onset of the service economy ...

Charlie vs Goliath

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Former Catholic priest Charlie Hardy is 75 years old and has no money or political experience. But none of that dissuades him from running for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Wyoming. Charlie’s principled and courageous ...

We Breathe Again

  • Feature Film
  • 2017

Trailer

Suicide - one of the leading causes of death for Alaska Natives. Almost every family has lost brothers, sisters, parents, and children to it. We Breathe Again introduces four Alaska Natives who are trying to break free from histories of trauma ...

Good Luck Soup

  • Feature Film
  • 2017

Trailer

For filmmaker Matthew Hashiguchi, growing up half Japanese/half Italian in a white Irish-Catholic neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, was a difficult experience. In Good Luck Soup, Hashiguchi sets out on a journey to discover how the rest of his multi-racial ...

Engage with the issues

POV believes in the power of film to engage communities in dialogue around the most important social issues of our time. Use one of the film's accompanying resources to further engage with the issues and host a free screening through our Community Network.

Host a screening in your community

Lesson Plan

  • Grades 11-12

Balancing Profits and Paychecks — Rights of Foreign Workers and Responsibilities of Their Employers

Reading List

The Workers Cup Delve Deeper Reading List

Film Credits

  • Adam Sobel DirectorAdam Sobel - Headshot_B&W.jpg

Critical Acclaim

Press Room

POV: 'The Workers Cup' | Press Kit POV Receives 8 Nominations for News & Documentary Emmy Awards
More from The Press Room

Broadcast schedule

Check your local PBS station
for upcoming airings of POV

More from this series

Learn more about POV