\n<\/p>\n
As immigrant communities gather across New York City to watch the FIFA World Cup, filmmaker Victor Sanchez is documenting how soccer becomes a lens for conversations about identity, discrimination and immigration. His documentary, “5 Boroughs\/48 Nations,” follows diaspora communities celebrating their homelands while navigating an increasingly hostile political climate in the United States.<\/p>\n
It was the stunned silence in the half-lit room that made Victor Sanchez realize he had spoken too soon.<\/p>\n
Watching Senegal\u2019s World Cup round of 16 match at the Senegalese Association in Harlem on Wednesday, the documentary filmmaker had already reached across the aisle to shake the hand of a fan wearing a Man\u00e9 jersey \u2014 a tribute to left winger Sadio Man\u00e9 \u2014 and congratulate him on what looked like a victory.<\/p>\n
Senegal was leading Belgium, the favorite, 2-0. Then, in the 86th minute, the match turned. Belgium scored twice before converting a\u00a0controversial penalty<\/a>\u00a0in the final minutes of extra time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNow I feel bad,\u201d Sanchez said, his shoulders slumping as he shifted the Sony A7 III camera on his right shoulder. But such emotional swings have become familiar over the weeks he\u2019s spent documenting World Cup watch parties across the city.<\/p>\n For his independent documentary project, \u201c5 Boroughs\/48 Nations<\/em><\/a>,\u201d Sanchez has followed gatherings from a\u00a0book talk at<\/a>\u00a0the Brooklyn Public Library about\u00a0a Haitian soccer icon who played for the U.S. in a history-making 1950 match\u00a0<\/a>to an outdoor watch party in Little Ghana in the Bronx. In the film, he asks what it means to cheer for countries whose soccer stars are celebrated while immigrants from those same nations often feel unwelcome in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n A watch party at the Senegalese Association in Harlem on July 1. Credit: Ambar Castillo \/ Epicenter NYC<\/p>\n At the end of the watch party in Harlem, Ramata Sakho of the Senegalese Association summed up the group\u2019s reaction. \u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on with referees and these African countries,\u201d she said. Earlier that day, the Democratic Republic of the Congo had also lost a match, 2-1, against England.\u00a0<\/p>\n She added, half-joking, \u201cDid Trump pay them? \u2019Cause he\u2019s crazy. He wants to get us [Africans] out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n Critics have argued that President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration policies disproportionately affect Black-majority nations, pointing to travel restrictions and\u00a0moves toward ending Temporary Protected Status for immigrants<\/a>\u00a0from several countries, including Haiti, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire and Senegal, who all appeared in this year\u2019s World Cup. Trump has also repeatedly\u00a0used racist language about Haiti and African countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sanchez kept listening, camera ready. Outside the club, Michelle Londino, an Italian American New Yorker who had watched the game in a bar across the street said the Senegal team had been \u201crobbed.\u201d Some people of Senegalese descent Sanchez approached were too heartbroken to speak with him about the match. They sat slumped against a pole on the barricaded sidewalk across the street from the watch party venue.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sanchez and others have contrasted the\u00a0barricades and heavy police presence<\/a>\u00a0with the lack of similar law enforcement measures at watch parties for European teams. Meanwhile, Senegalese neighbors had seen police blockades go up since their first World Cup match, against France.\u00a0<\/p>\n Londino called it \u201cracist.\u201d<\/p>\n Victor Sanchez chats with Michelle Londino about the Sengal match and the barricades in Little Senegal that day. Credit: Ambar Castillo \/ Epicenter NYC<\/p>\n The New York Soccer Journal\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0that the NYPD said the use of the barricades stemmed from large \u201cdisorderly\u201d crowds during a 2025 Africa Cup watch party, when streets were blocked and two officers were injured. Epicenter NYC had not received a response from the department by publication.<\/p>\n These are the kinds of conversations Sanchez was hoping to be able to find when he spent months building relationships in diasporic communities. Still, it doesn\u2019t make them any less tough to witness.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo see them not be able to do what other communities have been able to do, which is to have watch parties in the street, to go out and celebrate wins in the street, that has been the saddest and angriest thing for me,\u201d Sanchez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n He said members of the community, who often turn to the Senegalese consulate to advocate for them rather than the City Council or other local representatives, were hesitant to speak publicly about the recurring lockdown of West 116th Street, at the core of Little Senegal in Harlem, during Senegal\u2019s games. He described watching barricades rise before each match as \u201cdepressing.\u201d<\/p>\n Credit:\u00a0Ambar Castillo \/ Epicenter NYC<\/p>\n In many ways, Sanchez\u2019s whole life has prepared him for this project. He grew up in a progressive home where \u201cpolitics was embedded in my soul by my parents,\u201d he said. In the 1970s, Sanchez studied in a college media department that focused on deconstructing the power of traditional media and debunking the notion of journalistic objectivity long before those concepts became buzzwords.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was also the era of activist athletes: boxing icon Muhammad Ali refused to enlist in the Vietnam War\u00a0even though it cost him his boxing license.<\/a>\u00a0Sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who medaled at the 1968 Summer Olympics,\u00a0raised black-gloved fists during the U.S. national anthem as a Black Power salute<\/a>\u00a0to protest racial discrimination and injustice. NFL great Jim Brown organized Black athletes, including basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, to back Muhammad Ali in his stand against the war and racial injustice.\u00a0<\/p>\n For many sports fans, \u201cyour politics [as an athlete] became a litmus test,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou knew as much about somebody\u2019s politics as the way they played,\u201d Sanchez added, invoking a quote by the late Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano (sometimes called the \u201cpoet laureate of soccer<\/a>\u201d) that appears at the beginning of his book, \u201cSoccer in Sun and Shadow.\u201d<\/p>\n And true to his South Bronx roots, in what many longtime residents and hip-hop fans consider\u00a0the realest part of the realest borough<\/a>, Sanchez doesn\u2019t let interviewees cop out of difficult questions by saying they didn\u2019t want to get political.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018The whole thing has been political, so as a citizen, how come you don\u2019t want to comment on that?\u2019\u201d Sanchez said. \u201cI want to know, after the TPS ruling, after kicking a Somali referee out of the country as soon as he stepped foot in, do you really want to shout \u2018USA, USA, USA?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Victor Sanchez interviews neighbors outside Sanbra Door Restaurant on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx during the halftime break in Ghana\u2019s game Friday against Colombia. Credit: Ambar Castillo \/ Epicenter NYC<\/p>\n Talking politics at the World Cup diaspora parties has led to some surprises. In Little Ghana, an immigrant who wanted to chat with Sanchez outside Sanbra Door Restaurant on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx during the halftime break in Ghana\u2019s game Friday against Colombia, said he was a Republican, supported Trump \u2014 and did not want to talk about immigration issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sanchez didn\u2019t press him. He didn\u2019t \u201cwant him to feel like I was pinning him in a corner,\u201d Sanchez said. And he thought his relationship with this man and others outside the restaurant was more important to maintain than a back-and-forth exchange. He also found the man\u2019s perspective interesting at face value.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think he sees himself as a success \u2014 that he made it [\u2026] and why can\u2019t other people make it like he did?\u201d Sanchez said. He added that, unlike many of the Senegalese immigrants he interviewed, the Ghanaian man had\u00a0 opportunities, including a scholarship to the University of Rhode Island, that helped put him on the path to his current job at Toyota. Sanchez said he thought, \u201cIs his story different than the story America has about recent immigrants?\u201d<\/p>\n Sanchez has spent nearly five decades documenting overlooked communities. Starting with Downtown Community Television, he helped produce documentaries for PBS about everything from healthcare to portraits of working-class New Yorkers before covering El Salvador\u2019s civil war and Haiti\u2019s democratic movement in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n One recurring theme in conversations he has held throughout the diaspora communities he\u2019s visited: that being an immigrant here is \u201can honest life,\u201d but hard, he said. He added that, in interviews, the other side of that struggle is often mutual aid, \u201ca tightly knit world of support and love for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n More than anything, Sanchez said, the World Cup project has humbled him about how much there is to know in the city where both he and his parents were born and raised. \u201cIn some respects, I am a stranger in my own hometown,\u201d he said. He challenges all New Yorkers to similarly leave their boroughs and meet their neighbors.<\/p>\n Victor Sanchez and fans at a Senegalese Association watch party shared play-by-play updates from live phone feeds, congratulations and words of comfort as the match unfolded. Credit: Ambar Castillo \/ Epicenter NYC<\/p>\n Sanchez said this film is about far more than soccer or crowds dancing in the streets: \u201cImmigrants are under attack in this country, immigrants are demonized in this country, and I wanted my film [\u2026] to be a response to that.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the moments that best captured that vision came on June 19 during a Brazil-Haiti watch party in Brooklyn when the countries met in the group stage. Fans shared what they saw as a remarkable historical convergence: Haiti, the world\u2019s first Black republic, facing Brazil, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, while gathered in the United States on Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the end of U.S. slavery. Given these ties, it wasn\u2019t uncommon for Haitians to also cheer for their rival on the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Sunday night, after Mexico\u2019s Round of 16 loss, Sanchez, who sometimes sports a Mexico jersey, stepped out of\u00a0Juquila<\/a>, a Mexican restaurant in Elmhurst, and into steady rain. \u201cThere was a real sense of just quiet,\u201d he said. \u201cNot despair, but quiet sadness, quiet resignation to what had happened.\u201d<\/p>\n He wandered the neighborhood with his camera until he reached a corner where a group of Mexico fans had gathered, dancing in the streets to loud music in the pouring rain, \u201chaving the time of their lives in the face of defeat,\u201d Sanchez said.<\/p>\n Police officers soon arrived to disperse the gathering. Still, for Sanchez, the scene captured what his documentary is really about.<\/p>\n \u201cThe film is not about wins and losses,\u201d he said. \u201cThe film is about continuation, about an expression of folks who are here and want to make it here and feel they have a right to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t<\/p>\n Overview: As immigrant communities gather across New York City to watch the FIFA World Cup, filmmaker Victor Sanchez is documenting how soccer becomes a lens for conversations about identity, discrimination and immigration. His documentary, “5 Boroughs\/48 Nations,” follows diaspora communities celebrating their homelands while navigating an increasingly hostile political climate in the United States. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11991],"tags":[16180,952,7528,4297,12011,4892,919,1037],"class_list":["post-36164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-haiti-news","tag-capture","tag-cup","tag-filmmakers","tag-immigrant","tag-latest-news","tag-quest","tag-world","tag-york"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",0,0,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",0,0,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",0,0,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",300,300,false],"large":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",1024,1024,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",1536,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",2048,2048,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",370,265,false],"kava-thumb-s":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",150,85,false],"kava-thumb-s-2":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",230,230,false],"kava-thumb-m":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",400,400,false],"kava-thumb-m-vertical":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",370,500,false],"kava-thumb-m-2":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",570,450,false],"kava-thumb-l":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",1170,650,false],"kava-thumb-xl":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",1920,1080,false],"kava-thumb-masonry":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",600,999,false],"kava-thumb-justify":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",640,640,false],"kava-thumb-justify-2":["https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/haitiantimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-07-06-at-1.56.27-PM-4-1.webp?fit=780%2C585&ssl=1",1280,640,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"#RiseCelestialStudios","author_link":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/author\/ralph-c\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Haiti News<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Overview: As immigrant communities gather across New York City to watch the FIFA World Cup, filmmaker Victor Sanchez is documenting how soccer becomes a lens for conversations about identity, discrimination and immigration. His documentary, “5 Boroughs\/48 Nations,” follows diaspora communities celebrating their homelands while navigating an increasingly hostile political climate in the United States. It…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36166,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36164\/revisions\/36166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Little Senegal, big disparities<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Sports have always been political<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Lessons from underdog watch parties<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Related<\/em><\/h3><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"