A multi award-winning documentary from Associated Producers Produced in association with CBC, Channel 4 and Canal D
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Ric Esther BienstockSynopsis:
A gripping documentary exposé inside the global sex slave trade in women from the former Soviet Bloc.
An estimated half million women are trafficked annually for the purpose of sexual slavery. They are “exported” to over 50 countries including Britain, Italy, Japan, Germany, Israel, Turkey, China, Kosovo, Canada and the United States. Misunderstood and widely tolerated, sex trafficking has become a multi- billion dollar underground industry.
According to the International Herald Tribune, human trafficking is the fastest growing form of organized crime in Eastern Europe. Kidnapped and/or lured by those who prey on their dreams, their poverty, and their naiveté, Eastern European women are trafficked to foreign lands - often with falsified visas - where they become modern day sex slaves. Upon arrival, they are sold to pimps, drugged, terrorized, caged in brothels and raped repeatedly. For these women and young girls, there is no life, no liberty and no chance for a happy and meaningful future.
Sex Slaves takes us to “ground zero†of the sex trade - Moldova and Ukraine – where traffickers effortlessly find vulnerable women desperate to go abroad and earn some money.
The film focuses on the remarkable story of Viorel, a Ukrainian man on a mission to find his pregnant, trafficked wife in Turkey. Our hidden cameras follow Viorel as he travels to Turkey; his only lead the telephone number of the pimp who, he believes, has Katia in his possession. To secure his wife’s release, after days of desperate efforts, Viorel poses as a trafficker and sets out to buy his wife back. We follow Viorel to his meeting with Katia’s captor and from there into the world of trafficked women.
Interwoven with Viorel’s story, we meet other victims, traffickers and the families that have been torn apart by the trade in human flesh. Sex Slaves is the first film to have a convicted trafficker talk openly about how trafficking works, and how women are coerced into sexual slavery. With hidden cameras, we watch as traffickers move people across borders with impunity and expose how easy it is to purchase a modern day sex slave.
Sex Slaves also takes us to England and Canada where we find victims who tell harrowing tales of being repeatedly sold from country to country. Hiding her identity to protect her life, “Natasha†shares her heart wrenching story of being bought and sold from Romania to Italy and on to Germany and Belgium. Her final stop was Britain where she was put to work in a north London sauna. “Natasha†was finally freed from her nightmare in a police raid, a year after her abduction. For her part, “Eva†thought she was getting a job as a nanny in Toronto until her handlers took her from the airport to a strip club and forced her to work off her “debtâ€, i.e., her purchase price, before she could be set free.
Sex Slaves explores the global trafficking problem through personal stories and unfettered access to traffickers and the people they use as human chattel. The documentary captures both the investigative story and the human story behind the headlines. From the villages of Moldova and Ukraine, to underground brothels and discotheques, we witness firsthand the brutal world of white sex slavery.
