*FILM COMING DECEMBER 27TH*

Can Freedom ever be more frightening than enslavement? A Woman Captured is a raw and intimate portrayal of the psychology behind enslavement. Award-winning Director Bernadett Tuza-Ritter offers an evocative study of a woman so debased and disregarded that even she has lost sight of her own life. As a close friendship develops between the captured woman (Marish) and the filmmaker, Marish’s confidence is slowly restored as she begins to imagine a different life for herself. With this new found sense of confidence, will A Woman Captured ever be able to escape the unbearable oppression to become a free woman?

Can there be justice after genocide, sexual violence and slavery?

n August 2014, an Islamic State massacre of unimaginable proportions took place during the rapid invasion of the Yazidi people in Sinjar, northern Iraq. Young Yazidi women were separated from the old and taken to the Galaxy Cinema in Mosul. There they were paraded, selected, enslaved, tortured and systematically raped. Some were only 11 years old. This film tells the story of Shirin and Lewiza, two Yazidi women captured by IS, who escape to Germany thanks to the intervention of Dr Jan Kizilhan, a world-acknowledged expert on trauma. In all, he brought one thousand women and girls - all victims of IS sexual violence - from the refugee camps in Iraq to his clinic in the Black Forest for treatment. We follow the Yazidi women’s journey to recovery and ask how a survivor of unthinkable sexual violence can find justice and a path to rehabilitation. This is their story.

*FILM COMING JANUARY 3RD*

How do prisons make a profit from crime? In the last 30 years, America’s prison population has surged from 330,000 to 2.3 million inmates. In this deeply personal and provocative film, Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams sets out on a mission to investigate the prison system that has helped drive this explosive web of political, social, and economic forces that have consumed so many of Roger’s friends and family.

Can an employment system hide a reality of torture and humiliation?

35 year old Mary Kibwana is just one of thousands of women who lived through hell working as a domestic helper in Jordan. She is a mother of four and was lucky to return to her home in Kenya. She arrived in a wheelchair with 70 percent of her body burned. Two months later she died. Harassment, abuse, rape and 18-hour work days are a commonplace reality for domestic helpers who have travelled to the Middle East to find employment. Trapped in the Kafala system, their passports are confiscated and they are bound to their employer. Unable to flee, they risk harsh punishments or imprisonments if they try. ‘Maid In Hell’ gives unprecedented access to this frightening and brutal form of modern slavery. Following employment agents who vividly describe the trade, as well as maids who struggle to find a way home after harrowing, and sometimes, deadly experiences, we come to understand the grotesque reality faced by thousands of women each day. 

How does North Korea sell their own people to fund its dangerous regime?

Shrouded in secrecy and notoriously cash-strapped the North Korean regime has resorted to running one of the world’s largest slaving operations - exploiting the profits to fulfill their own agenda. These bonded laborers can be found in Russia, China and dozens of other countries around the world - including EU member states. Featuring undercover footage and powerful testimonials ‘North Korea’s Secret Slaves: Dollar Heroes’ reveals the scale and brutality of the operation. With the promise of payment and honor, thousands of North Koreans are being sent abroad, only to find themselves under constant surveillance, working 12 hour days, in harsh conditions for wages that are transferred directly to the regime. ‘North Korea’s Secret Slaves: Dollar Heroes’ exposes the inner workings of the system and how companies and governments, bound by law to protect their employees, are complicit in the trade of human beings. The film asks how this method of operation is legal, and what - if anything - is being done to stop it.

*FILM COMING DECEMBER 20TH*

Is poverty raising a generation of children for sale in India? In the world’s largest democracy, India, millions of vulnerable children are bought and sold, given only what they need to survive another day. Throughout Indian society the mechanisms of bonded slave labor are insidious, powerful and nearly impossible to escape for children who have become trapped in a system driven by profits. Indian director, Pankaj Johar, looks behind the overwhelming statistics - revealing how a lack of education and persistent poverty provides a breeding ground for modern slavery.