Leila Lak
In 2010, to many people’s surprise, Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup. With the award the world’s gaze fell on the country and the plight of the migrant workers on whose backs the Cup is being built.
“The life that I’m living is a difficult life,” says Carlton, a worker in the new documentary The Worker’s Cup “this is no life, man. You feel trapped because you never get to enjoy the privileges of life”
Directed by Adam Sobel and produced by Rosie Garthwaite and Ramzy Haddad, gives a never seen before portrait inside Qatar’s labour camps, where migrant workers from Asia and Africa are building the infrastructure for the 2022 tournament. First premiered in Sundance this documentary will be showing at Sao Paulo “It’s All True” festival on April 24.
The film is an intimate portrait of the worker’s partaking in the annual Worker’s Cup, a tournament set up in 2014 in response to criticism Qatar faced about the bad treatment of its construction workers. For anyone who has lived in the country you recognise that it is an incredible feat to get this kind of access to a group of people who are locked away from the rest of Qatari and ex-patriot society.
“I grew up in Qatar, yes,” said producer Haddad, a Palestinian-Canadian who spent most of his life in the small Gulf state, “but did I know Qatar so well until I interacted with these guys? Not so much. It was like we had walked into a parallel universe within the country, so it showed me a different side of a country I thought I knew very well.”
Currently there is an estimated 1.6 million migrant workers in Qatar, about 60 per cent of the countries inhabitants out of this the overwhelming majority are male and live in labour camps. Life for those working in construction is harsh. In 2015 the International Trades Union Conference estimated that over 1000 migrant workers had died in one year, although the Qatari government contests this figure. The reality for many is also that their employers have to give them permission to leave the country a practice that rights groups say amounts to forced labour. Qatar put in place a law banning this practice, but Amnesty International claims there were many loopholes that means the exit permit is still in use.
“Once we arrived and we started interacting with the characters and we tried to approach the film on their terms, it just seemed like that wasn’t a daily concern of theirs,” says Sobel on a skype call from Chicago, about the issues of life and death that the world’s press have focused on. “People were really just so obsessed with the isolation they were feeling, the psychological duress of living without their families. Living without women. Like they were there to serve a singular purpose and their humanity was stripped away in the process.”
The Worker’s Cup was put in place to give the labourers some form of a distraction from their daily grind, and to be a proficient public relations exercise for the companies involved. Work hours are gruelling, twelve-hour days, 7 days a week. Although the law stipulates that they be given one day off a week, most companies do not allow this. Qatar in the summer months can reach temperatures of over 50c, and by law workers must not work under these conditions, but again most construction companies ignore these rules. The film crew got access to one of the construction company’s teams, the GCC. Haddad stresses that the company is one of the best in Qatar in terms of workers’ rights but what the film aims to do is to illustrate is that the bar is set too low.
The characters stemming from Ghana, Kenya, Nepal and India open our eyes to their existence and the reality of living in the labour camps. As one character says, “For the good of my children my own life is thrown away.”
The isolation of the workers is palpable throughout the film. Their salaries are a measly 200 USD per month, most of which they send home to their families. Qatar is notoriously expensive, so even though their curfew is 10pm they have little choice but to stay in the camp as getting into Doha is financially preventative.
For Sobel this was the most challenging aspect of the filmmaking process.
“We would leave the camps and our apartments were in the city, areas our characters would really struggle to go,” he said. “And I think that injustice our characters would feel and we would feel at the same time knowing that this just wasn’t fair. That we could spend our whole day filming with them at the camps and at the end of the day just kind of split.”
The film captures the hopes, dreams and frustrations of the workers beautifully and sometimes with great humour, like when one character struggles to get a date with a woman. Others live and dream of football, the central character’s dream is solely to be spotted by talent scouts and be signed for a club. The World Cup looms large over the film. Unlike in Brazil where protesters were vehemently against the cup, these workers whose lives are put on hold building the stadiums do not seem to begrudge the event.
As the World discusses whether Qatar should have ever been awarded the Cup in the first place, the workers are not so conflicted.
“That is the irony that holds the film in balance for me,” said Sobel. “It’s that they really are just so fanatical about football despite the fact that the tournament is built on their backs, they just can’t help but love the game.”
Perhaps the biggest success of the film and what makes this film feel more universal is the nuance. Of course the lives the workers lead in Qatar is, as one character puts it, “hell”, but the sad reality is that the workers have little choice. A few have now left Qatar but some are looking to head back as poverty and unemployment make their existences at home untenable. In order to provide for their families they again face the prospect of giving up their lives and dreams to create the infrastructure that will house the world’s favourite football tournament.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Leila Lak is a journalist, documentary filmmaker and chief journalist of Revista Diaspora.