Filmmaker Josh Gloer talks about making Chasing Goals, a documentary following a Kansas City youth soccer team of refugees, the search for a distributor and some unexpected advice from a 9-year-old

Josh Gloer doesn’t need to worry about how audiences will respond to Chasing Goals. The documentary, which follows Global FC, a youth soccer team made up of boys from war-torn countries living in Kansas City’s Historic Northeast, packs an emotional punch.

Many of the boys grew up in African refugee camps, where food was scarce, living conditions were crowded and soccer offered a rare escape. Life in Kansas City also brings challenges for them, including poverty and gun violence.

“When opportunities come, you have to grasp on to them just like how you grasp onto your last breath if you were drowning,” says Donat, 15, who is originally from Tanzania. His words were among several moments that drew audible gasps during the film’s September world premiere at the Gem Theater.

But Chasing Goals isn’t all heartbreak. The film follows the team as it prepares for and competes in the USA Cup, the nation’s largest youth soccer tournament, in Minneapolis. There are thrilling moments on the field, plenty of laughs and a reminder that teenage boys, no matter where they’re from, can be universally awkward and hilarious.

Gloer’s journey to Global FC began in 2023. Moved by the plight of Afghan refugees following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the four-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker began volunteering with Jewish Vocational Services. There, he learned about Global FC and its upcoming trip to the USA Cup. Soon, he was filming the team around the Historic Northeast and at practices at East High School.

A Kansas City native and Liberty resident, Gloer, 47, spent 15 years working in the Los Angeles film and television industry before returning home. His industry connections helped bring some major players aboard, including comedian Trevor Noah’s production company, the Kansas City Chiefs’ Foolish Club Studios and award-winning creative studio Wavelength.

Despite that star power—and a promotional boost during Kansas City’s World Cup festivities—Gloer and his team are still searching for a distributor to bring Chasing Goals to theaters and streaming platforms. As it turns out, making a great film is only half the battle.

For now, audiences can watch an extended trailer at chasinggoalsfilm.com.

We caught up with Gloer between assignments for the History Channel to talk about making the film, the boys who inspired it and what comes next.

Is it fair to say you’ve made an unintentional sports film? For me, it was about finding a completely overlooked subject, and we used sports as a hanger to put that on. I started volunteering because of some anger that I started harboring for people being very anti-refugee. And that’s not cool. I truly believe we’re all the same, and you can’t help where you’re born or how you’re born. The real motivation was showing them. There are people here you don’t know about, who you can give your old soccer cleats to, and it would make their year. I worked with the resettlement agencies, setting up houses. I used to cover the front desk, and I saw kids translating for parents who knew no English and people who came in to only get three little stacks of diapers a month or something. I’m trying to help these people without speaking any of their languages. I don’t know what I’m doing and realize: This is something my daughter should see. Her dad’s struggling to try to talk to these people who are just people trying to make it and are literally needing everything. Someone suggested we go play soccer with this team. I wasn’t a soccer guy. My daughter played soccer. She’s a goalkeeper.

At one point in the film we learn that a few of the boys want to return to their native countries. Even though some were from war zones and refugee camps, the East Side’s crime and gun violence frightens them. Was that an awakening? Their parents were the ones who left the war zones, and the kids grew up in refugee camps. Some of them told me the camps were great. “I loved it, and I want to go back because I just walked with my friends and we would just walk for hours and hours.” I was silent. We actually dubbed my voice in because I was shocked that anyone would say anything about wanting to go home, to the point where I was like: “You would rather go back and eat once a day than live here?” And he said, “Yeah.”

My wife didn’t want me to keep doing this because we could hear so much violence happening around us during practices. But for some reason, this field that we practiced on was this little oasis where we never even saw the people. But a block away, you could hear people shooting at each other. And I would drive the kids home out of the oasis and there’d be people in the middle of the street, and you’d have to stop and kind of hope they don’t hassle you.

You took months off from your commercially funded work to film this. How different was it from your paying gigs? I was doing tons of true crime. I had this moment when my daughter walked in and I had to minimize my monitors, and I’ve got my script that I don’t even want her to read, and I realized I couldn’t show her what I was doing. I started talking to her, and she was probably 9 at the time. I said, “I don’t really like this.” And she just immediately says, “Well, why don’t you do something you like?” And I [thought], “That’s great. Why didn’t I think of this?”

You obviously want as many people to see the film as possible. Are you impatient with the process of finding an audience? It was an attempt to do something that I actually wanted to do, and it was well worth it. We don’t have distribution yet and are working on it. We have powerful entities behind us, so I’m not concerned about it. We watched it as friends and family before the premiere, on that giant screen at the Current’s stadium, and my daughter leaned over and says, “This is awesome.” And I [thought], “Boom! Totally worth it.” And all the boys loved it. It changed my life and career in a way that I did not expect, and all I cared about was whether they would like it. I want it to be somewhere where they can get it for free and show their friends

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