The Mighty Cosmos Kickstarter campaign update
Our Kickstarter campaign for The Mighty Cosmos has now closed, raising £30,815 towards our £50,000 target. While we didn't quite reach the threshold required to receive the funds through Kickstarter, the campaign has helped bring the story to a much wider audience, securing significant media coverage and generating valuable support for the documentary.
Over the past few weeks, we've been working hard to raise awareness of The Mighty Cosmos, our forthcoming feature documentary telling the extraordinary story of a group of Sudanese refugees who fled conflict in Darfur and rebuilt their lives in Sweden through football.
The campaign attracted support from across the football world and beyond, with coverage secured across a range of respected media outlets, helping introduce the story to new audiences in the UK, Sweden and internationally.
Among the highlights was an extensive feature in The Los Angeles Times, exploring the remarkable journey of the players and the humanitarian work that helped bring football into refugee communities in Chad.
The project also received coverage and interviews across BBC Radio Tees, talkSPORT (twice), P4 Jämtland in Sweden and the UTV Podcast, with contributions from club chairman Alan Barker and former Aston Villa and Sweden international Marcus Allbäck, where you can read watch and listen to the interviews via the hyperlinks above, and videos below...
We're incredibly grateful to everyone who helped make these opportunities possible, shared the campaign, spoke about the project or took the time to support the film.
Although this fell short of our £50,000 target, it represents a considerable show of confidence in the project and we want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who backed the campaign. Every contribution and every conversation has helped bring the film closer to becoming a reality ... and the end of the Kickstarter campaign is not the end of The Mighty Cosmos Documentary.
We're now continuing to explore alternative funding opportunities, including direct contributions, private backing, potential commercial partnerships and other sources of support.
The £50,000 Kickstarter target was intended to help fund the next stage of production, including further filming in Sweden, securing essential archive material and beginning the editing process. We remain committed to finding a way to take the project forward and bring this important story to the screen.
For those who originally pledged through Kickstarter and would still like to honour their intended contribution, we're offering the opportunity to make that same pledge directly through PayPal. This provides an alternative way to support the project, as the original Kickstarter pledges will not be collected.
We'll also honour the equivalent Kickstarter reward for qualifying direct contributions, in line with the original reward terms.
If you haven't had the opportunity to support the campaign, or would like to make a contribution now, we'd be hugely grateful. Every contribution will help us build the funding base needed to move the production forward.
The Mighty Cosmos is about much more than football. It's a story of survival, friendship, belonging and the power of community. It follows a group of young men who experienced displacement and upheaval, found a new home in Sweden and built something remarkable through their shared love of the game.
We believe their experiences deserve to be documented and shared with a much wider audience. The response to the campaign and the media coverage we've secured have reinforced just how important it is to keep pushing.
Thank you again to everyone who has supported us so far. We hope you'll continue to follow the journey and help us make The Mighty Cosmos Documentary happen.
To find out more about the documentary or discuss supporting the production, please contact us here.
