By Chloe Setter, ECPAT UK Information Officer

It is often with trepidation that I approach mainstream films about human trafficking. While I applaud any attempt to raise awareness of the subject, many movies are either sensationalist or fail to explain and portray the harsh realities of trafficking.

However, The Whistleblower, featuring Rachel Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave, is a story that has truth at its heart. Based on the real-life experiences of Kathryn Bolkovac, an American policewoman who went to Bosnia as part of a UN mission, this is a film that is all about getting to the core of the problem - and demonstrating how difficult that actually is.

While working as a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia 13 year ago, Bolkovac, played competently by Rachel Weisz, secures Bosnia’s first conviction for domestic violence.

Nicknamed Xena: Warrior Princess by her former police colleagues in Nebraska, Bolkovac is clearly a woman who believes in justice and is dogged in her attempts to achieve it.

But this competent policewoman is at a loss when she discovers the body of a skimpily dressed Ukrainian girl in the river. Another girl is found wandering nearby, from Moldova. All the lost girl says is the word ‘Florida’ – the name of a nightclub frequented by local police and UN staff.

When visiting the club, Bolkovac finds it deserted – except for fistfuls of American dollars in the safe along with foreign passports. To her dismay, she discovers seven girls on dirty mattresses behind a locked door.

“Sheer terror” is how the real-life Bolkovac describes the girls’ faces in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. They point to the river outside: “We don’t want to end up floating.”

So many of the girls share the same stories: they’d gone abroad for work, for a better job. But something had gone horribly wrong.

Bolkovac is taken on a journey of discovery and is forced to come to terms with the shocking and brutal realities of the trafficking of women and young girls for sexual exploitation – stories that are all too familiar for those of us working in the anti-trafficking sector.

She encounters corruption, closed doors and cover-ups as those who exploit and traffick the girls close ranks. As is often so common, trafficking remains a hidden crime; its victims left voiceless to speak out against the power of systems and individuals who seek to exploit them for personal and financial gain. It is a rare occasion when the likes of Kathryn Bolkovac make such extraordinary personal sacrifices to force people to take notice.

One ECPAT UK employee, Stana Buchowska, our EC Project Coordinator, had the pleasure of meeting Kathryn Bolkovac a few years ago where she was telling her story at an anti-trafficking conference in Poland. This is clearly a story that refused to go away, and rightly so.

The Whistleblower is a well-made film that sticks closely to the facts of Bolkovac’s case. Hers is a tragic and hard-hitting tale, but it is one that deserves to be heard by as many people as possible.

Watch a trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al3anBiHwmI.