The growing, international problem of trafficking is a subject of many news articles and special reports. But did you know it has become a hot subject of films?
We’re not just talking about movies with Liam Neeson attacking white-collar mafia in Paris. Real, hard-hitting documentaries as well as artistic portrayals of the issue are hitting theaters everywhere.
Here are a few that feature AIM or are collaborating with our efforts to end child sex-trafficking!
The Pink Room Documentary
The Pink Room follows the journey of Mien and other young girls in the turbulent world of sex slavery that at times seems unfathomable. Mien grew up in Svay Pak, just eleven kilometers outside the capitol city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a vast and vicious epicenter of child sex slavery. At a young age she enters life in a brothel, and her virginity is sold at a high price.
After her innocence is brutally stolen from her, her value becomes less and less with each purchase of her body. She is held captive, raped and sexually tortured 12 hours a day. Even when help is within reach, obstacles that appear too great to conquer squelch her dream of freedom.
This is a story of redemption, ordinary people who become unlikely heroes, Cambodians rising up with compassion to take back their country and a town’s process of rebuilding from the inside out. The Pink Room shows passionate determination in attacking the complex issue of human trafficking with an even more complex and diverse response of rescue, restoration, reintegration and prevention. Mien gives hope in the midst of a blinding darkness. In a world where it is estimated that there are over one million children held captive and sexually abused, a flower blooms in the heart of Cambodia.
Website: http://www.thepinkroommovie.com/
Nefarious: Merchant of Souls
Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, is a hard-hitting documentary that exposes the disturbing trends in modern sex slavery. From the very first scene, Nefarious ushers you into the nightmare of sex slavery that hundreds of thousands experience daily. You’ll see where slaves are sold (often in developed, affluent countries), where they work and are confined. You’ll hear first-hand interviews with real victims and traffickers, along with expert analysis from international humanitarian leaders.
From initial recruitment to victim liberation––and everything between––the previously veiled underworld of sex slavery is uncovered in the groundbreaking, tell-all Nefarious: Merchant of Souls.
Website: http://nefariousdocumentary.com/
Not My Life
Filmed on five continents over a period of four years, Not My Life unflinchingly, but with enormous dignity and compassion, depicts the unspeakable practices of a multi-billion dollar global industry whose profits, as the film’s narration says, “are built on the backs and in the beds of our planet’s youth.”
While acknowledging that trafficking and slavery are universal crimes, affecting millions of human beings all over the world, Not My Life zeroes in on the fact that the vast majority of trafficking and slavery victims are indeed children. This fundamental truth, says the film’s director, Oscar® nominee Robert Bilheimer, raises profound questions about the very nature of our civilization. “What kind of society cannibalizes its own children?” Bilheimer asks. “Can we do these sorts of things on such a large scale and still call ourselves human in any meaningful sense of the term?”
Not My Life features dignified and inspiring testimony from survivors; depictions of trafficking, exploitation, and slavery in all parts of the world including forced labor in Africa; street begging and garbage picking in India; sexual trafficking in the United States and Southeast Asia; and various forms of child enslavement and abuse in both North and South America.
Website: http://notmylife.org/
Trade of Innocents
In the back streets of a tourist town in present-day Southeast Asia, we find a filthy cinder block room; a bed with soiled sheets; a little girl waits for the next man to use her. Alex, a human trafficking investigator plays the role of her next customer as he negotiates with the pimp for the use of the child.
Claire, Alex’s wife, is caught up in the flow of her new life in Southeast Asia and her role as a volunteer in an aftercare shelter for rescued girls. She, and Alex both still are dealing with their grief of losing a child years earlier. As both of them struggle in their own way to overcome the pain of their past and realities of child exploitation where they now live and work, they find themselves being pulled together into the lives of local neighborhood girls, whose freedom and dignity are threatened. Parallel story lines intertwine and unfold twists against the backdrop of the dangerous human trafficking world, in a story of struggle, life, hope and redemption in the ”TRADE of INNOCENTS.”
Website: http://www.tradeofinnocentsmovie.com/
If you are producing a media project and would like to feature AIM or raise funds for our projects, please review our media policies on our RESOURCE page, and CONTACT US with further questions.