Counterpoint For Her

Until recently, Bosnia Herzegovina was a minor stop in the burgeoning human trafficking industry, but today it has the dubious distinction of being a final destination. Director Danijela Majstorovic's Counterpoint For Her combines sobering statistics about human trafficking with eye-opening interviews, slow-motion re-enactments, and clandestine footage of the Bosnian nightclubs where women are bought, beaten, and threatened into performing sexual favors. Viewers will hear accounts of betrayal, abduction, and “cattle calls” where naked women are paraded before club owners who buy and sell them on a whim (one Bosnian girl sold into the trade by her brother's good friend describes her life as “a gradual dying” before she managed to escape after a near-fatal beating). By contrast, comments from citizens on the street, local officials, and bar owners reveal a shrugging acceptance of human trafficking as a necessary byproduct of a war-ravaged country and suggest--in blame-the-victim style--that there's often complicity on the women's part. Like Anonymously Yours (VL-3/04), a brutal, shockingly detailed film about human trafficking in Southeast Asia, Counterpoint For Her successfully counters the notion that women tricked into sexual slavery are either naïve or stupid, but it also does a good job of exploring the social, political, and economic conditions that have allowed human trafficking to flourish. Of particular interest is an interview with a United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights that amounts to a veritable indictment of both the UN (for undermining efforts to combat trafficking by dismissing its soldiers' visits to the nightclub with a "boys will be boys" attitude toward prostitution) and the international community (for its slow acknowledgement of the existence of human trafficking in Bosnia). An ugly but informative exposé, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (A. Cantú)