Freida Pinto’s slavery film to show at London Festival

A NEW movie starring Slumdog Mil­lionaire’s Freida Pinto and Demi Moore, about the real-life story of a young Indian girl who gets trapped in the global sex trade, struggled to get funding because it was seen as being too controversial.

The gritty film Love Sonia, which also features award-winning Anupam Kher, will premiere this month as it opens the Bagri Foundation London Indian Film Festival.

“It’s been a long, long journey. A very difficult one because the truth is no one wanted to make this film,” de­but director Tabrez Noorani told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “No one wanted to make a film about traf­ficking in Hindi.”

Noorani, a producer on Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire, Life of Pi and Eat, Pray, Love, said he first encountered sex trafficking vic­tims in Los Angeles in 2003.

After some girls were found in a container shipped from China, he was inspired to work with charities tackling the issue, including partici­pating in several raids on brothels.

“The misconception is that it’s only women and girls. It’s not. It’s young boys, it’s old men, it’s older women... There’s all types of trafficking. No one is immune to it. Literally, it’s all races, all ages and both genders,” he said.

For Mumbai-born actress Pinto, who has been involved in the film since its inception and is a vocal hu­manitarian and advocate for wom­en’s empowerment, the issue of women and girls’ trafficking needs collective action.

“Just because this film is in Hindi and it has primarily Indian actors, it’s not a problem that just one country suffers from. It’s really a global prob­lem,” she said.

“If we can find our voices, our level of empathy can be raised for people who don’t look like us and who don’t speak our language, I feel that collec­tive voice is what is ultimately going to result in change.”

Both Pinto and Noorani said the key to tackling the global trafficking crisis was education, from teaching children in villages not to trust stran­gers, to working with authorities in cities to help identify trafficked peo­ple on the streets.