'Holly' details Cambodia sex trade

Independent film focusing on lives of child prostitutes opens today in Long Beach

11/22/2007
By Phillip Zonkel, Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (Long Beach, California, USA)

In March 2002, Guy Jacobson, on vacation near Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was surrounded by 15 girls, aggressively soliciting him for prostitution.

One 5-year-old girl told Jacobson, "I yum yum very good."

She begged Jacobson for money and said the madam of her brothel would beat her if she returned empty-handed.

Jacobson gave the girl $20, and she left.

But Jacobson didn't forget.

That encounter is recreated word for word in the new independent film "Holly," which opens today at the Edwards Long Beach Stadium 26, among other locations. The film is about a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl who has been sold by her impoverished family and smuggled into Cambodia, where she is forced to work as a prostitute.

Holly is played by 17-year-old Thuy Nguyen, a Westminster High School senior.

Jacobson wrote the film's script with director Guy Moshe.

"I was horrified to find it wasn't an isolated case," says Jacobson, one of the film's producers, during a recent telephone interview from his New York City residence. "When I realized how much of a global problem it is, a light bulb went off and I decided to write a movie about it."

The numbers are huge and reach into all countries.

Every year, more than 1 million children, women and men around the world are sold into sexual slavery, according to UNICEF.

The U.S. State Department estimates 800,000 victims are trafficked across international borders annually with 17,500 sold in the United States. Nearly 30 percent of the victims are between the ages of 9 and 15, and some are as young as 5 or 6 years old.

The $12 billion sex slave trade is the third most profitable criminal industry, behind only narcotics and weapons, according to Interpol.

In "Holly," Patrick (Ron Livingston, "Sex and the City"), is an American card shark and dealer of stolen artifacts, who, for many years, has lived emotionally numb in Phnom Penh. Then he meets Holly (Nguyen), a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl, in a red-light village inhabited by child prostitutes.

The girl has been sold by her impoverished family and smuggled across the border to work as a prostitute.

Holly's virginity makes her a lucrative object, and when she is sold to a child trafficker, Patrick embarks on a frantic search to bring her to safety.

For Nguyen, a Vietnam native who moved to Westminster in 2003, working on the film was an eye-opening experience.

"I had heard about human trafficking in general, but didn't know much about it," says Nguyen, who was 14 during film production.

Filmed on location

"Holly" was shot on location in Cambodia, including several scenes in actual brothels and Phnom Penh's infamous Svay Pak, also known as K 11 (it's 11 kilometers from Phnom Penh). For years, that notorious red-light village has been the premiere destination for thousands of child molesters and sex tourists coming to Cambodia to prey on children, some as young as 5 years old, for as little as $5.

For her research, Nguyen, who was 14 at the time, met with a 16-year-old Vietnamese girl who was a former child prostitute.

The girl told Nguyen that before working in the K 11, she had been raped by her stepfather and uncle.

"It was really sad to hear about her life," Nguyen says. "But it helped me to understand my character better and what these kids go through."

While on location, Moshe was troubled at the open acceptance of child trafficking and slavery.

"It's horrifying how these things happen and people just go about their daily lives," Moshe says during a recent phone interview from Hollywood. "That's more shocking than anything."

Difficult, dangerous

The 190-day production schedule for "Holly" began in January 2005, and it seemed like no one in Cambodia wanted "Holly" made.

Less than 12 hours before the first day of shooting, Moshe - with an armed bodyguard - sat in a hotel lobby counting $60,000 in cash to a local gangster - also with an armed bodyguard - to secure the release of the film's sound equipment.

During filming in and around the K 11, which is reported to be owned by the Vietnamese mafia, the cast and crew worked under heavy protection from guards armed with AK-47s.

Moshe, 33, says he knew ahead of time filming would be difficult and potentially dangerous, but "I went out and did it anyway. It was a job that had to get done." No one was hurt during production, he says.

At the end, a lot of people made the film for more than cinematic reasons.

"This is a crime against humanity," says Jacobson, who helped form www.redlightchildren.org, a grassroots initiative to increase awareness and inspire immediate action against the child sex trade. "Many of us don't look at `Holly' as simply a film. We were trying to make a difference with the film."

"I'm glad I was a part of this movie," Nguyen says. "It will help people be more aware of human trafficking."