Still from Sex Slaves
Still from Sex Slaves
 

Sex Slaves

by Ric Esther Bienstock
A gripping documentary exposé inside the global sex slave trade in women from the former Soviet Bloc.
2006  ·  1h28m  ·  Canada
English, Russian
English subs
About the Film

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 “debt”, 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.

Upcoming Screenings

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Festivals and Awards
2007
, Edward R. Murrow Award
2007
Emmy Awards, Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism
2006
British Broadcast Award, Best Documentary Programme, U.K.
2006
Gracie Awards, Award for Outstanding Documentary
2006
U.N. Documentary Film Festival, Best of the Festival
2006
Royal Television Society Educational Television Awards, U.K.
2006
Worldmedia Festival, Hamburg, Germany, Silver Award
2006
Televisual Magazine, U.K., Bulldog Award for Best Documentary
Editor
David Kazala
Producer
Felix Golubev
Producer
Ric Esther Bienstock
Producer
Simcha Jacobovici
Producer
Brian Woods
Cinematographer
Michael Grippo
Soundtrack Composer
Aaron Davis
Soundtrack Composer
John Lang
Sound Recordist
Peter Sawade
Production Manager
Greta Knutzen
Production Manager
Tara Jan
Researcher
Bruce Thorson
Researcher
Jane Logan
Writer
Ric Esther Bienstock
Film Related
About the Director

Ric Esther Bienstock

With an unparalleled career exploring controversial issues, producer/director Ric Esther Bienstock is one of Canada’s finest documentary filmmakers. Bienstock has garnered numerous awards since beginning her career in 1986. She won a U.S. Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism and The Edward R. Murrow Award for her film Sex Slaves. Sex Slaves (also released as The Real Sex Traffic) investigates the trafficking of women from the former Soviet bloc into the global sex slave trade.

Written, directed and produced by Bienstock, Sex Slaves is the first film to take viewers inside the world of trafficking to meet victims, their families and traffickers, who talk candidly about their experiences of how the sex slave trade operates.  The film aired on PBS to record ratings and screened at the U.N. Documentary Film Festival in New York where it won Best of the Festival. It has screened at over 20 international film festivals including the IDFA in Amsterdam. The U.S. Department of State has acquired rights to Sex Slaves to screen at U.S. Embassies worldwide as an educational tool and Bienstock has been invited to speak at many anti-trafficking conferences and Universities internationally including Columbia University in New York.
No stranger to infiltrating secretive or dangerous communities, Bienstock’s produced Impact of Terror (CBC, CNN), an award winning documentary about the ripple effects of a suicide bombing in Israel. Bienstock also produced the Genie Award winning documentary, Deadly Currents, which explored all sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Deadly Currents premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released theatrically across North America.
Ms. Bienstock most recently Executive Produced Finding Atlantis, which aired on National Geographic in the US.  The film was one of the top ten Twitter topics for that week and made headlines around the world in March 2011.

In 2010, Bienstock produced the acclaimed Beasts of the Bible (Animal Planet, VisionTV). Bienstock also co-produced the highly controversial The Lost Tomb of Jesus with James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici.  She also acted as Producer or Executive Producer on many of Associated Producers’ films including Science of the Soul (VisionTV, The History Channel), Charging the Rhino (Sundance Channel) and The Struma (History Channel, HBO, Channel 4),
Ebola: Inside an Outbreak (released internationally as Plague Fighters) for PBS’ NOVA, Channel 4 and the CBC took Bienstock and her crew behind the quarantine lines of the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Zaire. The only film team granted full access to the restricted areas, she remained at the epicenter of the outbreak throughout its lifecycle in order to capture the inside story of the epidemic as it unfolded. Directed and produced by Bienstock, Ebola: Inside an Outbreak has received numerous international awards including a Gemini Award and the Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. Bienstock also directed the location footage for the widely acclaimed Plague Monkeys, which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism.

The depth of Bienstock’s experience and interest in a wide variety of topics is expressed through the range of documentary subjects she has chosen. Her credits include series producer, director and writer of a three part documentary special on the roots of magic with Las Vegas magicians Penn & Teller.  Penn & Teller’s Magic and Mystery Tour (CBC, Channel 4, TLC) takes maverick masters of illusion Penn & Teller on the road to the back streets of China, Egypt and India on a wild, funny and unpredictable odyssey in search of extraordinary practitioners of magic.

Bienstock produced and directed a feature-length prime-time television special on the business of boxing entitled Boxing: In and Out of the Ring (A&E, SKY-TV (U.K.), TV Ontario).  She wrote and directed The Money Shot, one hour of a six part documentary series called The Sexual Century (History Television, CBC, ITV).   The Money Shot is a revealing behind-the-scenes look at the hard-core pornography industry and how that industry is penetrating mainstream culture. She also served as supervising producer on A Child’s Choice/A Time to Live (Live, Channel 4 and Discovery U.S.).

In 1995, Bienstock produced and directed Ms. Conceptions, a documentary about single mothers by choice. It aired on CBC’s Witness series to record ratings, screened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art as part of its film series and has been invited to film festivals around the world. Ms. Conceptions was honored with the 1996 Gemini Award for Best Documentary and a Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award from the IDA in Los Angeles.
She has always had an interest in Africa, which resulted in Meeting the Challenge for CBC’s Man Alive program, AIDS in Africa (WNET/PBS), which investigate the AIDS crisis and Burden on the Land (Global TV, The Discovery Channel) which focused on the international development efforts in nine African countries.

Bienstock’s topics always explore the human spirit through first-hand accounts. An uncompromising dedication to showing the true face of human drama will continue to take her around the world and into the inner heart of the human condition.

 
Other films by Ric Esther Bienstock

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