This week’s documentary film curated by the editorial team at 21WIRE.
In this short documentary vignette, The Guardian investigates the dark side of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup. Despite the promises of the hosts to improve conditions for migrant labourers many still live desperate lives in the shadow of unimaginable riches.
“I want to go home but I don’t have any money”, bemoans one worker employed in Qatar’s booming construction industry. “We may as well just die here.” He explains how they are made to work without pay and reside in squalor as the country’s authorities turn up the heat on preparations for the tournament. They came in search of better salaries only to get caught in Qatar’s complex and counter-intuitive employment laws. It is modern slavery enforced not through shackles and whips, but by fiddled contracts, missing permits, and misleading paperwork.
Run time: 15 min
Producer: Pete Pattisson
Guardian Films
