Hello everyone, it is I, your Feisty Indian Aunty who just watched the South African thriller I Am All Girls and am utterly terrified and very, very sad. What is this world? So many of us live such sheltered lives, completely oblivious to the horrors that are happening to children, as they are stolen from their homes, and trafficked as sex slaves, in order to enrich depraved and greedy men.
I Am All Girls is a must see. This is a movie that doesn’t shy away from highlighting all the ways men put our children at risk. No, not children, girls. Only girls. Of all ages, shapes, and sizes, to be sent away and never seen again. The movie centers around two very special women. One is a crime investigator, Jodie Snyman (Erica Wessels), and the other is an “avenging angel” serial killer, Ntombizonke Bapai (Hlubi Mboya), who targets these vicious men who have had a hand at child trafficking.
Jodie has been having a hard time in trying to find out how these girls are being kidnapped. She struggles with a boss who just doesn’t want her to succeed in her investigation. It is only when she forms a relationship with Ntombi – and discovers her secret – that Jodie feels free to cut through the red tape and corruption and begins to get to the heart of the conspiracy, that might or might not be tied to the police themselves.
Sex trafficking, especially when it has to do with children, isn’t an easy thing to portray in cinema. But I Am All Girls does an excellent job in taking on the subject matter delicately as well as with great nuance and sensitivity. This movie doesn’t set out to shock you. Instead, it works subtly, allowing your own imagination to fill in the horrors faced by these girls, thereby creating something that is enraging, thrilling, and emotionally affecting.
I Am All Girls left me petrified because I realized that the atrocities we see in it, happen today, happen everywhere, and happen with complete impunity. Children are an easy prey, and in countries where law and order is not paramount, they get lost on a daily basis.
We tend to forget that there are men who will do anything to protect their loved ones, but will have absolutely no qualms about sacrificing yours. As long as it makes them money. These people live within our society and unless we educate ourselves on the bad things that are happening all around us, the world will never be safe for children.
Yes, we can teach our children not to trust strangers. We can instill within them the importance of not straying from their family and trusted friends. But as a society, we can also inflict the harshest possible punishment on all of the men who harm our children, as well as all those who close a blind eye and let them do it. Castration comes to mind.
This movie frightened me no end. But I highly recommend it as a way to further enlighten yourself on all of the things we still have to do in order to create a better world.
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