Artists for Change Presents ANGIE: LOST GIRLS Film Review — Raising Awareness of Human Trafficking

A group of teenage girls are forced to wear tight, revealing clothes that oversexualize them for their age. They sleep on derelict mattresses on the floor that have turned yellow from years of overuse and dilapidation. Angie, a sixteen-year-old girl, and the newest victim of a local human trafficking ring, enters the room, sobbing, screaming, and looking for solace in the other girls who are all being sex trafficked by the same gang. Bruises and burn marks cover their bodies, and every time they return to the room of mattresses, they exhibit even more afflictions. Director and Producer Julia Verdin conveys the trauma these victims face before, during, and after they are trafficked.

Nearly all the men who paid the trafficking gang found listings of the victims on the dark web, approaching the gang leaders exclaiming, “Hey, I didn’t ask for this one. I requested the redhead specifically.” Some of the girls have lived this way for most of their lives, like Zoe, a girl who has been in and out of the trafficking ring and trauma rehabilitation. She is Angie’s support system and holds her when she returns to the room in languish. Zoe understands Angie, and she is willing to sacrifice her own safety to help Angie escape.

Once the police find Angie, we realize the importance of rehabilitation into society after the police and antitrafficking organizations rescue a survivor. The rescue doesn’t end with the physical liberation from the ring—the psychological stress requires just as much attention. Angie returns home, unable to play music, talk to her family, even sleep in her bed. She looks at herself in the mirror and screams because she doesn’t recognize who she is anymore. Angie feels that her experience has stolen something critical to her – her identity, and she needs to continue rehabilitation to cope with the trauma.

ANGIE: LOST GIRLS Refutes Myths of Human Trafficking

Angie: Lost Girls dispels the common misconceptions regarding human trafficking. Gang leaders don’t only kidnap young girls from careless and neglectful families. In Angie’s case, her parents and sister love her, and she was a good student. She devoted time to playing the ukulele and singing, yet it was her new boyfriend, Mario, who manipulated her into visiting an abandoned warehouse for an audition with a music producer.