This film challenged our class to look at the differences and similarities it showed toward the mainstream rescue narrative.We saw how the victims in the film were portrayed as passive, and also how the heroic figure identified herself with the victims.
This is based on a true story directed by Larysa Kondracki. The main character’s name is Kathryn Bolkovac, a female cop who takes a job as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia. While there, she works on investigating abuse and sex trafficking cases. While there, she slowly uncovers the corruption that has been hidden. Kathy learns that DynCorp employees have been facilitating and receiving service from a sex trafficking ring. Once she discovers this information she is fired from her job and she takes her story to BBC. Her character represents bravery, but Kathy is almost too brave to the point where she may seem naïve. Through her efforts, she continuously failed or would a make a simple mistake. Also, even if things went wrong that weren’t her fault, she was blind to the fact that this sex trafficking ring was being controlled by peacekeepers she was working with.
I believe Kathy identified herself with the women in the pictures that she was viewing then they were on the wall. I also believe her incentive for making these girls safe, specifically Raya, is because she always kept her daughter in mind. She couldn’t imagine something happening like that to her child so she put her passion into stopping it. Her empathy is what drove in this film.
In the article “Foreign Encounters,”Heike Harting compares Patrick Reed’s documentary and Larysa Kondracki’s film.
“Both films provide different dramatizations of the foreign and the foreigner. But rather than reading the foreigner in terms of a particular identity, I will refer to it as the political logic of subjectivization and emancipation in Rancière’s sense.”
Heike also refers to the victims as having agency. Although the film takes place in Bosnia with Americans playing the role as peacekeepers, the victims in the film aren’t shown as exotic. Whenever they speak, they speak in their native language. I think what Heike is trying to say is that their pain and trauma as seen as something universally faced by all genders and ethnicities who are a victim of sex trafficking.
Some cinematic elements I observed is in the beginning of the movie when Kathy is first searching the shelter. She is by herself, she hears soft ticking and water trickling. The audience is seeing everything from her point of view – as she looks at the wall of pictures the camera is shot over her shoulder, when she looks at numbers written on the ground in chalk it is shown through a bird’s eye view. In the darknesss, she makes her way with a flashlight so we see only what the light is shown on.
Another cinematic scene is after her boss encourages her to go on paid leave and tells she isn’t the maternal type for leaving her daughter at home. Once she leaves and walks in hallway and men are staring at her. This is seen through a very subtle fish-eye lens and slow motion. In some parts of the film, they use documentary-style shooting. For example, walking with the camera behind people, and other camcorder shots over the shoulder of characters.
I believe this film was mostly informational. In the end, Kathy failed to truly get help for the girls. But she did do her job in informing the public of what was happening. In the film, it could also be perceived that Kathy did more harm than good. I believe Kathy was the reason for Raya’s death. In the scene when Raya didn’t want to leave the bar, it could have been the case of her having Stockholm syndrome, being fearful, or, knowing the trafficking system all too well. She knows she will never be safe and is aware of all the corruption that will go on and she will end up back where she is. So in Raya’s head, her leaving was hopeless.
Kayman Whaley 