How did a team of Kurdish refugees make it to Sweden's top soccer league?

This interview is part of CBC Arts's coverage of the 2023 Hot Docs Festival.

Kordo Doski never set out to make a documentary. He was supposed to be a professional soccer player. 

Born in Iraqi Kurdistan and coming to Canada as a child, Doski was a star player for his Kitchener high school team before getting a scholarship to play Division 1 Soccer in California. But after career-threatening knee injuries, Doski returned to Canada to play and finish out his degree. 

Then he found a new focus: acting. Like many actors of Middle Eastern descent in North America, Doski found he kept getting cast repeatedly in stereotypical roles. So he started writing his own. He wrote and directed the movie Mikael about a soccer player trying to make it in Iraq featuring a then-unknown Randall Park.

When Doski moved to Sweden for a time to be near his wife's family, he saw a new soccer story unfold in front of him: a local team, the Dalkurd Football Club, which started as a social project, supporting Kurdish youth in Sweden started to climb the ranks, eventually joining Allsvenskan, Sweden's top professional soccer division and premier league. 

Though Doski had never made a documentary before, he knew this story needed to be told. The result is Allihopa: The Dalkurd Story, a heartwarming documentary tracking Dalkurd's rise to the height of Swedish football while exploring the Kurdish players' struggles as both refugees and players.

Allihopa made its world premiere at the 2023 Hot Docs Festival and can be streamed online until May 9th through Hot Docs. We spoke to Doski about his feel-good documentary — an audience favourite at the fest.

Allihopa could have been a very sad film about the fight for a Kurdish state and the plight of Kurdish refugees. Instead, it's a hopeful story about a Kurdish soccer team going all the way to the top. Why did you decide to take that approach?

The sad approach, especially when you mention the Kurdish history — that's really the much easier lane to paint. I was conflicted with that. I've had other cuts where it was just a bit more heavy-handed and I loved it. As a Kurd, it felt like I did my part to really bring it out there. But this film is about hope.

I remember speaking to my dad. He was like, "Son, both these versions are perfect the way they are, but what the world needs right now is hope." That was the last little stamp of approval that I really needed. 

My family, politically, as a lot of Kurds have, they've sacrificed so much for this. So I felt like: let me see if I can tell a story that is just about that. It shows us as dreamers, as people who have accomplished a lot, as people who are able to adapt to new environments and succeed when given an opportunity. 

This was your first documentary. Why did you decide to take the leap for this story?

[Dalkurd] have been on my mind for a long time. The circumstances didn't align and I didn't want to just tell a story about what they accomplished as soccer players. That wasn't my main objective. My main objective was that people don't really know Kurdish people. 

There are depictions of so many minorities — not just Kurds, a lot of people in the Middle East — that we've conditioned ourselves as to who these people are and the stories that have been represented about these people. You don't see these guys as funny or charming. 

My thing was: can I please just help introduce you to some people that can broaden everybody's horizons of who these people are? And just to not have such a closed, narrow idea of the possibilities of who we can all be.

There's always that theme of something Middle Eastern or something Kurdish [in my work]. But it's just not about that. It's about: how can we just tell a story that we don't get to see often that is universal and can strike a chord in all of us?

Allihopa is premiering in Toronto, where you lived for a time! How does that feel?

It's surreal when you think of how many great festivals there are around the world, and to be able to find this in my area, a place where I've walked up and down in front of that Hot Docs theatre. I used to go to Insomnia all the time!

My friends and my family haven't ever seen any of my work. They've seen rough drafts, but this is the first time that so many people in Toronto since I've left in 2007 are going to get to sit in the theatre and watch this. My parents are flying back from Kurdistan for this, so it's a big deal for us.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.