Name of film:
Bought & Sold
Type: Documentary
Countries included: Russia, Germany
Subject: Sex trafficking
Director: Gillian Caldwell
Date of film: 1999
Length: 42 minutes
URL Contact Info: www.witness.org
Purchase film through Witness Store
Info on Film: Bought & Sold is an
investigative 42 Minute documentary was
produced and directed by current WITNESS Director
Gillian Caldwell while she was co-director of the
Global Survival Network (GSN). It is based on a
two year undercover investigation conducted by GSN
into the illegal trafficking in women from the
Former Soviet Republics, and features interviews
with traffickers, Russian mafia, trafficked women,
and groups working to provide services to
trafficked women. Bought & Sold is available
in English and in Russian.
Name of film:
Bucharest Express
Type: Feature film
Countries included: Moldova
Subject: Sex trafficking
Director: Chuck Portz
Date of film: 2003
Length: Feature length
URL Contact Info: www.bucharestexpress.org
Info on Film: An American
journalist, a mysterious Gypsy woman and a
bookkeeper with an inside angle try to stay one
stop ahead of a gang of ruthless killers as they
uncover the horrors of the human trafficking of
sex slaves in the Balkans. Young women are
being transported to Bucharest with false promises
of jobs as dancers and models. Once there,
they are traded for heroin, stripped of their
passports and shipped to Turkey and a life
of prostitution.
Name of film:
Girls from Chaka Street
Type: Documentary
Countries: Latvia
Subject: No Options -- Only Prostitution
Director: Antra Cilinska, http://www.latfilma.lv/cilinska/,
Producers: Emily Marlow, Jenny Richards, Television Trust for
the Environment
Date of film: 1997
Length: 15 minutes
Contact Information: http://www.tve.org/sisters/girlsfrom.html
www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/girls/html
Info on Film: In 1996 Eva
was driven into a forest, stripped and gang-raped
by 14 men who left her for dead. It was ,she
said, just one of the occupational hazards of
working as a prostitute in Latvia. The
flourishing sex industry in Latvia, Lithuania and
Estonia first took off when the Baltic Countries
gained independence from the Soviet Union and the
economies crashed. Underage
girls--earning more in a night on the streets than
a trained doctor does in a month--face physical
and psychological risks and Mafia
involvement grows.
Name of film:
Lilya 4-Ever
Type: Feature film
Countries included: Russia, Sweden
Subject: Child Sex Trafficking/Exploitation
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Date of film: 2002
Length: 109 minutes
Contact Information:
Email: info@newmarketfilms.com
URL: www.newmarketfilms.com
Info on Film: From the first
devastating moments of LILYA 4-EVER, as the
cherubic 16-year-old protagonist staggers, broken
and beaten to a pulp, down the sidewalk of a bleak
and unidentifiable urban prison and until its last
brutal moments, the movie never relents in
portraying the darkest side of teenage life in the
former Soviet Union. The film begins in a
tiny unnamed town where Lilya lives with her
mother, who is leaving for America with her new
boyfriend. So desperate are the poor and angry
people in this dilapidated gray city that they
idolize Lilya for her luck in finding a way to
escape.
However, when
Lilya's mom burns rubber in her daughter's face.
leaving Lilya literally stripped and
penniless, shivering in horror on her knees in a
mud puddle, it's clear that Lilya's not going
anywhere but downhill, fast. Abandoned and living
in a disgusting flat with only her abused
11-year-old friend to care for her, Lilya passes
her days sniffing glue, listening to techno, and
starving. Soon hunger drives her to prostitution,
which is a gateway to variously horrific forms of
rape and violence. When hope arrives in the form
of a businessman from Sweden who promises to take
Lilya away, the film gains momentum for the
descent into its terrible conclusion.
powerful film
in which both Lilya's strength of spirit and her
naivete allow for all the world's cruelty to grab
hold of her and shake her about, LILYA 4-EVER will
not easily be forgotten by its viewers.
Name of Film: Sex Slaves , Presented by PBS FrontLine
Type: Documentary
Countries Included: Russia, Turkey
Director/Writer: Ric Esther Bienstock, victimsoftrafficking@apltd.ca
Date of Film: 2006
Length: 40 minutes
Contact: Home videos/DVD's not available, school/educational videos/dvd's available at 1-877-PBS-SHOP. Transcripts can be downloaded from PBS site. Excellent information provided at PBS site.
URL: www.pbs.org/frontline/slaves
Info on Film: FRONTLINE presents a unique hidden-camera look at this world of sexual slavery, talking with traffickers and their victims, and exposing the government indifference that allows the abuses to continue virtually unchecked. Sex Slaves also follows the remarkable journey of one man, determined to find his trafficked wife, who carried her photograph in his pocket and posed as a trafficker himself to buy back her freedom.
Name of film: Svetlana's Journey
Type: Docu-Drama - based on a true story
Country included: Bulgaria
Subject: Child sexual exploitation
Directors/Producers: Michael Cory Davis, Hristina Dimatrova
(Bulgaria)
Date of film: 2005
Length: 40 minutes, subtitled in English
Contact Email: Michael Cory Davis: triplethreatinc@aol.com
URL: www.MichaelCoryDavis.com AND www.svetlanasjourney.com
Info on Film:
Writer/Actor, Michael Cory Davis and the
Bulgarian Organization Face to Face have joined
forces to fight the child sex slave trade by
producing and filming "Svetlana's
Journey". A short film based on the
true tragic events that occurred to a young
Bulgarian girl after being sold to a family for
10,000 euros by her adopted parents.
Name of film: Trafficking Cinderella
Type: Documentary
Countries included: Eastern Europe
Subject: Sex Trafficking
Director: Mira Niagolova
Date of film: 1994 (Canada)
Length: 48 minutes
Contact Email: Miran@adelphia.net
URL: http://www.unaff.org/2001/f-trafficking.html
Info on Film:
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there
has been an alarming increase in the forced
prostitution and trafficking of women from
eastern Europe to the west and North America.
This investigative documentary journeys into the
macabre world of the sex trafficking trade,
which is flourishing in the absence of
regulations and lack of political will to
curtail the problem.
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