SF DocFest 2024: Allihopa: The Dalkurd Story

Filmmakers in attendance

The unprecedented success of Dalkurd, a football team originally set up to give young Kurdish refugees in a working-class Swedish town something to do, is an uplifting story of triumphant underdogs that also highlights the situation of the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a homeland. It’s both a sports film and a political film, as the two are intertwined in the players’ lives.

Despite local indifference, the team rose rapidly through the divisions to the point where we meet them in the film, about to play a nail-biting match that could catapult them into the top tier of Swedish soccer. Along the way, we hear the players’ harrowing personal stories and grow to understand the complex character of the club, where football is crucial but the Kurdish struggle for independence is the name of the game.