Sex trafficking: Lately, it’s everywhere. Probably not in your town, but it’s in New York City, on the network news, in documentaries, on Law & Order, and even in Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore’s star-powered “real men don’t buy girls” ads starring Bradley Cooper and other celebs. The booming international business that tricks and coerces women and girls into prostitution is also a hot topic at SIFF, where it’s at the heart of two Bosnian dramas, The Whistleblower and As If I Am Not There.
The Whistleblower (director/writer Larysa Kondracki’s debut feature) is one of those riveting true stories that you can’t believe you never heard before. Possibly because, in this case, the media coverage of the scandal primarily circulated in Europe. Set in the aftermath of the 1990s war in Bosnia, the film’s inspired by the experiences of Kathryn Bolkovac (Rachel Weisz), a Nebraska cop lured by the promise of a fat and fast paycheck (that would allow her to move closer to her daughter), who signs up with the security agency the U.N. uses to outsource Bosnian peacekeepers. Upon arriving, Kathryn dishearteningly discovers their not-so-strict qualifications for service include a high school diploma and to be 25 or older. At best, the lax standards cultivate a boy’s club of officers who’d rather turn a blind eye to domestic abuse and other crimes than challenge the local police force or status quo. At worst, it fosters a human trafficking industry that preys on the dreams of Eastern European women. Once enslaved, they’re shackled by intimidation, violence, and the false promise of freedom — if they earn back the price of their purchase. When Kathryn struggles to save one young girl, she finds few allies among her colleagues — minus Human Rights Commission head Madeleine (Vanessa Redgrave) and Internal Affairs investigator Peter (David Strathaim) — or among the Bosnian police force and her U.N. superiors. Instead she unearths an endless supply of deadly enemies.
While The Whistleblower exposes the brutality of human trafficking from the view of an outraged outsider, As If I Am Not There sees with the eyes of one of the trade’s victims — young, pretty, green-eyed schoolteacher Samira (Natasa Petrovic). (Though her tale and those of her fellow female prisoners draws from testimonies shared during the Hague’s International Criminal Tribunal.) In the wrong place at the wrong time, Samira’s forced to sexually serve soldiers that invade the rural village that she’s recently moved to from Sarajevo for her first job. With a tremble of her lips or a widening of her gaze, Petrovic speaks volumes about her terror and torment. But it’s her absence that’s most telling, the vacant stare as her traumatized mind disassociates from a horrific reality, a split that director Juanita Wilson visually manifests with a shivering “shower” scene that’s far from what it seems — and is arguably one of the most powerful revelations you’ll ever witness in a psychological drama. In addition, Wilson employs out-of-body shots of an alternate Samira surveying the abused self that’s bleeding on the floor. It’s a surreal yet intimate perspective that briefly makes what, for most of us (fortunately), is a distant nightmare feel painfully close.
It’s a transmutation of time and space that both films perform to spotlight an inhuman industry that, despite the attention it’s received, needs much more if there’s any hope of dismantling it anytime soon.
As If I Am Not There
Grade: B+
The Whistleblower
(Full review with grade to come after official film release.)
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