Soccer camp Beirut Parc

Documentary about the soccer camp for refugee and local children in Lebanon.

Directed by Matthias Frickel and Henning Hesse, DW, 2016, 50 min

Soccer is a team sport. To children especially the sport may impart fair play and a sense of team spirit. It helps to break down cultural barriers and adds new perspectives to life.

For this reason Goethe-Institut Beirut has organised several soccer camps in Lebanon for refugee and local children, providing an opportunity to get to know each other through football. The initiative was carried out in cooperation with the German Federal Foreign Office and the David Nakhid International Football Academy. In 2016, 900 teenagers from Beirut and three more Lebanese towns participated in the football camp.
  The film "Beirut Parc" follows Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian kids on the Soccer Camps fields, in the refugee camps, and during everyday live in Beirut, providing an impression of the refugees' lives in Lebanon, and of the impact football can have on their integration in society. Both the mixed-team training sessions and the final competition allowed the kids to identify social and cultural common ground as well as differences. 

The 50-minute TV documentary produced by Deutsche Welle in cooperation with Goethe-Institut is available in German and English, and with subtitles in Arabic. The documentary is being distributed globally by Goethe-Institut.