Human Trafficking: The Movie

I watched Human Trafficking, with Mira Sorvino, the other night and I'm still thinking constantly about it. I knew very well what the nature of sex slavery was but I did not realize women were becoming involved completely innocently - kidnappings, etc. I thought, at the very least, they were being stupid enough to keep paying smugglers to bring them to Western Europe for waitressing jobs even though they must know by now, with all the stories in the media over the years, that this is a front.

I've been reading everything I can about it - I read one story of a girl from Baia Mare, Romania, who was freed from a sex club in Sarajevo. She was literally pulled into a van on the street and was raped several times in the van within minutes of her capture. She was driven past her house to prove they knew where she lived and would kill her family if she tried to get away. She was 16 then, and 21 when she was rescued here.

It just frustrates and amazes me that this sort of thing takes place in the world today. Even with grown women, much less the todler-aged children these people use as well.

But Human Trafficking was a wonderful movie, such strong and realistic characters. I especially loved Nadja, the Ukrainian girl. God she reminds me so much of me, when I was 16 if it was the type of country where these modelling agencies were operating at that time, it could have just have easily been me - I would have fallen for the same things she did. It just really made me aware so much how these women are just... sure there is poverty and people being sold by their parents and people paying smugglers, but there is so much trickery and fake fronts and kidnappings and things too.

The scene where the American detective (Mira Sorvino) is being put under cover as a RUssian mail-order bride was very nice also. They put her in my style make-up and made fun of her confidence saying her eyes did not look Russian but American. So she goes a little blinky and timid and he says, "Now there's a Russian bride to be!" Made me think about the place of women in Eastern European societies and how, wow... we really are farther back than I realized. It's just so equal on the surface nobody asks themselves many deep questions.

But to see how silly and stupid she looked in America with her EE-style clothes, her jacket, heels, and skirt, and hair curled and make-up...LOL It's how I dress and I'd look like some 1950s prostitute in America.

Anyhow, those two things about the movie really caught my intention.

Has anyone else seen it, what do you think?