The Whistleblower (Larysa Kondracki, 2010): USA/Canada/Germany

Reviewed by Ulrika Bjorck at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2011.

I actually had no expectations about The Whistleblower when I sat down at my seat in Lobero Theatre the other day. To be honest I didn’t even know what the story was about at all, I only knew that it was based on a true story. That I was going to see such a terrible yet engaging film never crossed my mind. We tend to suppress things that are hard to think about, the ugly truth about what’s going on out there around the world is just too hard to handle. In this case I’m talking about human trafficking, an extremely important issue that needs to be more observed.

Kathryn Bolkovac (played by Rachel Weisz) has a pretty ordinary life in her hometown Nebraska. She is extremely passionate about her job as a cop, and spends more time on her career than on her family and kids. In the divorce from her husband she loses custody of their daughter, and finds out that they are moving to a town far away. While mentioning to her boss the wish to transfer to a department closer to her daughter, she gets a new mission on her table; going to post-war Bosnia as a peacekeeper for a month, earning a big amount of money. Knowing that she needs the money for the move she had no doubts about going. Little does she know what she is going to face getting there; that in Bosnia human trafficking was a huge problem. And it doesn’t take long before she finds herself in the middle of a big scandal involving trafficking and U.N. She mades herself a new mission, on her own trying to fight these injustices, only having one person to trust; herself.

Seeing this movie would make anyone upset. Not that it’s a bad movie, the opposite, it is very well composed and the director (Larysa Kondracki) does an amazing job with this story. She pulls you into this heartbreaking truth and she wants you to feel the pain that these young enslaved girls feel. I guess it’s the only way for us to understand, really. Even though we’re far away from actually comprehend what is really going on in the world.  An estimated 2,4 million girls are victims of this horrible crime.

I was very impressed with all the acting in this film. It felt elaborated and very real. Above all, the young women playing the victims, made such honest and true descriptions of their characters.

I left the theatre with a big lump in my stomach, feeling almost sick knowing and being reminded of the truth. But at the same time I’d had a great movie-experience. The sort that you get when you feel that you’ve seen something that is extremely well done and leaves you with lots of questions to ask and things to discuss. I would definitely recommend everyone to see this film, mostly because of its important content but also for the great acting.