The World Cup 2014 has been played. Germany is world champion. Meanwhile, FIFA chooses a new President as the future World Cups in 2018 in Russia and 2022 in Qatar are causing some controversies. A perfect moment to reflect and zoom in on the stories that happened just outside of the stadiums in three major World Cup cities.
The interactive web documentary Who Are The Champions? investigates who the real winners of the World Cup are; FIFA, the inhabitants, the investors or the government?
Trailer: Who Are The Champions? – Stories From The Other Side of the Stadium from Submarine Channel on Vimeo.
Produced by Dutch studio Submarine Channel, the documentary explores the economic, social and cultural impact of the FIFA World Cup on people who live and work in the immediate vicinity of World Cup stadiums. In Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), Germany (Leipzig) and South-Africa (Johannesburg) they have collected twelve personal stories from local people.
The project mixes audio stories, text stories, street photography, Google Street View, Google Maps and news stories from several archives, providing context for the viewer and giving insight into the effects of a major sports event like the FIFA World Cup on people’s lives.
Combined, these stories paint a unique picture of what happened around three major stadiums in the weeks and months leading up to the World Cup (Rio de Janeiro) and how people are looking back at the event several years after (Leipzig and Johannesburg).
You can navigate through the website in different ways. You can watch all stories after each other or just go directly to the personal story of your choice by clicking on the pictures in the map or in the section on the bottom. Within the audio and text stories you will see related news articles and related stories from the other cities.
This latest project adds to Submarine Channel’s growing list of interactive factual work, which often explores difficult topics. Previous releases include Unspeak – an i-doc investigating the manipulative power of language – and Last Hijack which lets you experience the murky world of piracy in Somalia through the eyes of a pirate and a captain.