NOWNESS have teamed up with Dazed and filmmaker Turkina Faso in an eye-opening journey to Moscow ahead of the World Cup, which for the first time will be hosted by Russia. Faso's timely documentary follows the lives of young black soccer players in a nation that has long struggled with its treatment of minorities.

Despite the promise of hype, hat-tricks and hope during the global tournament, concerns about racism—actively investigated by football’s world governing body, FIFA, in the months leading up to the event—have long marred this most global of celebrations. Street violence, discriminatory chants, and a vocal far-right fanbase have dominated conversations about hosting an international sporting contest in an environment that many see as hostile to diversity and difference. However, the ball has rarely been passed to minorities themselves, creating little space in which to tell their own stories, and to speak about what it means to be different.

Sitting in the director’s chair, Faso—a Russian native—meets the young black men kicking about on the metro, practicing in public squares, and hanging out in apartment complexes as they make their way in an already competitive industry, with stories of hope and hospitality siting alongside those of hatred.