80
Though there are moments of real joy and liberation during the games, everything outside of the matches is cloaked in a mood of lost dreams and stunted futures.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
75
More than a documentary, the film is an exposé on the world of global capitalism’s callousness that handily demonstrates their inhumanity.
70
Sobel lets these conflicting feelings hang in the air, offering no pat conclusions, or convenient corporate bogeymen. By refusing to resolve or reconcile these contradictions, he ensures that we’ll keep thinking about them.
50
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
Sobel’s inexperience with the feature-length format and the requirements of specific genres shows, with Workers Cup constantly struggling to reconcile the horrible fate of what are essentially modern-day slaves with the aspirational side and dreams of victory and beyond that are the end game of any underdog sports story.
70
What emerges is a nuanced, if somewhat undernourished, portrait of the poorest inhabitants of the richest country in the world.
83
The Workers Cup is a bittersweet portrait of the labor that built the glimmering towers, stadiums, and luxury malls: spaces these men are not permitted to be seen in public areas of.
70
The New York Times by Ken Jaworowski
While it would have been easy for Mr. Sobel to unleash an angrier screed against the inequalities shown, some well-placed images tell us all we need to know about the haves and have-nots here.
75
A documentary with a defeated spirit, but with fleeting glimmers about why the oppressed keep playing.
50
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
Not an exposé, and hardly a case of sports-as-uplift, The Workers Cup feels like a toe dip when the topic calls for at least a deep wade.
90
Screen International by Sarah Ward
Aping sporting conventions, The Workers Cup relates a riveting underdog tale about a quest for glory, while simultaneously probing the reality faced by the poorest people in the world’s wealthiest country.