TORONTO |
TORONTO (Reuters) - Gabriel Range, who tested the boundaries of good taste with a fictional movie account of the assassination of U.S. President George W. Bush, takes truth as his muse at the Toronto International Film Festival with a drama about a woman enslaved in the London of today.
But the truth behind this year's "I am Slave" is in many ways as strange as the fiction in Range's 2008 movie "Death of a President." There is still slavery in London today, it says, and it's time to do something about it.
"I found it so shocking that a story like this could be contemporary. And I found it very very moving and that's how the journey began," Range told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the festival.
"I found it such an affront that such a story like this could take place in London today."
"I am Slave" stars British actress Wunmi Mosaku as Malia, a Sudanese woman wrested from her home as a child and sold as a domestic servant to work -- without pay -- for a family in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.
The family sends Malia to London to work for a cousin, but she's as trapped as she was in Sudan, isolated by her lack of English and her fear that her captors will find some way to hurt her family if she tries to escape.
She is beaten, locked in a dark room and forbidden from looking the family in the eye or speaking to anyone unless she's spoken to first.
"She's very much a slave in her mind. She can't leave, even if the door is unlocked," said Mosaku. "You're a slave in here," she added, pointing to her head.
Somewhat disconcertingly, the movie is voiced entirely in English, something that Range said he thought would help make it more accessible to a wider audience.
The rest of the cast comes from Israel, Morocco and Iraq, with Kenyan first-time actress Natalie Mghoi playing Malia as a child in Sudan's Nuba Mountains of Sudan, scenes that were shot in Kenya.
The story is based on the book "Slave" by Mende Nazer, who is now a British citizen and a human rights activist with a foundation focusing on education for girls in the Nuba.
"It's everybody's responsibility to watch this film," said Nazer, who describes her age as between 29 and 30.
"It's not something that you can be indifferent about. It has a very rich deep message for people to take away with them and to think about it, and something must be done about it, and that's what I'm trying to do."
A British parliamentary report from 2009 says there are at least 5,000 trafficking victims in Britain, most of them in forced prostitution. The report singled out domestic workers as another area of concern.
(Editing by Jill Serjeant)
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