Human trafficking thriller ‘a punch to the stomach’
Andrew Kooman thinks about the movies when he’s working.
It’s not something you expect to hear from a writer whose career has largely played out on the Canadian stage.
The Red Deer native is known for his tense and socially conscious plays that are usually staged in an efficient, bare-bones manner.
But he admits he often thinks about how his stories might translate to the big screen, with a big cast, sprawling vistas and a pounding soundtrack. So it wasn’t surprising that he would be keen to adapt his harrowing play She Has a Name, which deals with the issue of global human trafficking, into a globe-trotting thriller.
“We are film lovers,” says Kooman. “Whenever I write for the stage I think of the film as well, because why not? Even as we toured across Canada, I know we had one theatre critic say, ‘This would be great as a film.’ It just encouraged us to explore that and to tell it in a bigger way and reach a wider audience.”
Kooman wrote the screenplay but gave the ambitious task of shooting the film in Thailand to his brothers, Daniel and Matthew. All three are on the line with the Herald to discuss the film, which opens at the Plaza Theatre on Friday.
She Has A Name follows the story of an exhausted by still idealistic lawyer (Giovanni Mocibob) who poses as a john in hopes of building a legal case against a sadistic pimp who is trafficking underage girls. He tries to recruit the help of a girl known only as Number 18 (Teresa Ting), slowly building trust with frequent and perilous meetings in the dark backrooms of a Bangkok brothel. Those familiar with the original work, which featured a Greek-like chorus and actors taking on more than one role, might be surprised at how smoothly it has been transformed into a riveting, fast-paced political thriller.
Part of that was due to Andrew being fairly open to stretching the scope of the story. Shot in and around Bangkok, the film juxtaposes gorgeous shots of Thailand’s wilderness with the insular drama playing out between Mocibob and Ting in the claustrophobic room in a brothel. In the film, the political corruption has been expanded to reach deep into the U.S. government.
“It’s quite true to the heart of the story, but there’s new characters and a whole new scale,” Andrew says.
While She Has a Name certainly works as compelling drama, the brothers make no qualms about the fact that it has largely been created to raise awareness of human trafficking and its underage victims.
After attending college, Andrew worked for a Christian non-profit organization in Malaysia when he came across child victims of the global sex trade. His brothers, who have made similarly themed documentaries, also came across the issue in their travels.
“I was shocked that I wasn’t aware of the issue,” says Daniel. “When you meet survivors who are coming out of a horrible nightmare into a new story or a new dream, those stories of redemption obviously resonated with us. I just imagined that if I didn’t know about this, then lot of people don’t know about this. So it was just about bringing the issue to a bigger audience and humanizing it.”
Which is not to say that the film offers easy solutions or even a particularly happy ending. Throughout the movie, those tasked with helping victims of human trafficking are faced with a daunting network of deep-seated corruption, poverty and indifference. It’s estimated that of the two million children forced into sexual slavery, only one per cent have been rescued.
“I’ve definitely wrestled with that,” says Daniel. “One of the real guideposts for me with this production was that it needed to be sobering reality and a punch to the stomach to the audience. Because when you hear about it and learn about it, that’s what I felt. This does hurt and it does trigger a bit of hopelessness ... But ultimately, it should stir us to think we have to change that statistic.”
The Kooman brothers’ Unveil Studios have offices in both Red Deer and Comox Valley, B.C. There are plans to follow She Has A Name with more adaptations of Andrew’s plays, including We Are The Body, which looks at prisoners of conscience in Romania, and Delft Blue, about Nazi occupation in the Netherlands.
For now, Andrew, Daniel and Matthew see their debut as not only a film but part of a movement.
Through the website, 20 per cent of money made through rentals or purchases of the Blu-ray will go to organizations such as Iris Cambodia, IJM Canada and Globalact, groups on the front lines in the war against human trafficking.
“We really want to connect the film directly to ending human trafficking” says Matthew.