BRAMA, June 12, 2005, 11:00 am ET
Press release
'Lilya 4-Ever,' critically acclaimed feature-length film about trafficking to be screened in East Village
New York — Lilya 4-Ever, a critically acclaimed
feature-length film by award-winning Swedish Director
Lukas Moodysson, will be the focus of a special
screening at 7pm on Tuesday June 14th at the Ukrainian
CYM building, 136 Second Street (btw ST. Marks
and 9th Street) on the 2nd Floor.
Through a heart-wrenching vignette of post-Soviet
realism, the film, which received the award for Best
Swedish Film in 2002, reveals the aching portrait of
an Eastern European 16-year old, who through a series
of events including abandonment, lack of employment
opportunities and the lure of a dream to overcome her
economic circumstances, finds herself sold into sexual
slavery in Sweden. This phenomenon reverberates
throughout Ukraine, one of the largest source
countries of trafficking victims
While exact numbers are difficult to pinpoint, roughly
75% of the apprehended cases of trafficking victims in
the New York area in the past year have been from
Eastern Europe - about 50% comprise young women and
children from Ukraine. Criminal organizations prey on
women, offering what seem like legitimate jobs abroad,
then confiscating passports and brutally coercing them
into working in the sex industry."
Although Ukraine was one of the first countries in
Europe to formally criminalize human trafficking by
adopting Article 149 in its new Criminal Code to make
human trafficking an indictable criminal offence, more
can be done in destination cities such as New York to
raise the awareness of trafficking scope and impact
among policy-makers and the public-at-large.
Sponsors for the event include Amnesty International
Firefly Project, CAT-USA and Isadora Productions
For further information email Isadora Productions at
info@isadoraproductions.org
The screening of Lilya 4-Ever is part of a fundraising campaign
to enable the production of a play titled 'Becoming Natasha'.
The play is about the trafficking of Eastern European women, and is based on the highly praised book
'Natashas: The Global Sex Trade' written by journalist Victor Malarek.
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