Sold, an adaptation of the Patricia McCormick novel of the same name, follows a Nepalese girl named Lakshmi (Niyar Saikia) who falls into a world of sex trafficking and abuse when she travels to India. She’s imprisoned in a brothel called Happiness House with several other children, watched over by their tyrannical brothel madam (Susmita Mukerjee). Life becomes a constant struggle as Lakshmi suffers the harrowing brutality of her dire situation, though she never gives up hope that, one day, she and her new companions will find freedom.

The film also stars Parambrata Chatterjee, Gillian Anderson and David Arquette.

A movie designed to raise awareness about the rampant child trafficking going on around the world, Sold will see a limited theatrical release this weekend, where audience members will be encouraged to bring the film to their hometown, college, high school, or private group. For more information, visit soldthemovie.com

We spoke to Mukerjee and director Jeffrey Brown in San Francisco, where the film is opening this weekend at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.

I’m interested in getting your input on this considering the film’s unique strategy to spread awareness. The movie market has started to squish, in a way, over the past several years. Blockbusters are doing well and small, independent pictures have more avenues to find an audience than ever before. But mid-sized productions are sort of going away or not doing so well at the box office. It’s an interesting time.
Jeffrey: It’s very interesting. It’s a very different world than ten years ago, five years ago. For us, the theatrical distribution of this film is a way for everyone to learn that they can bring our film to their community. Our film was really created as a weapon for change. You can watch it at the theater and bring it to your high school, your college campus, your faith-based community, and you can start using it as a fundraising tool. On our website, soldthemovie.com, you can learn about our partners and you can learn about the fund that we’re creating. We’re channeling money to survivors of trafficking. What we want to do is shine a light on child trafficking. Every year, 1.8 million kids—and I think that’s a massive underestimate—are trafficked every year.

I’m sure the research process was…well, I’m sure it was many things.
Jeffrey: We followed the same track as [Patricia McCormick,] the author of the book that we optioned and turned into a movie. We did the same research she did. We went to the same organizations and went to many beyond that as well to really understand the issue. We took our cast and crew into red light areas, and they had long, in-depth conversations with survivors.

Susmita: I went to the red light areas because I was playing the part of madam. I needed to see what it would be like to be in the head of a person like this who would so ruthlessly sell thirteen and twelve-year-old girls. It was a very difficult and dark journey. The perception of the brothel madam…it’s not what it is in the Bollywood movies. That’s very glittery…it wasn’t real. It was a very difficult thing to go through the head of such a woman. Meeting several of these women helped me connect to them. I was privy to very, very intimate stories. Not all of it was used in the film’s narrative, but to me, as a subtext, I could understand very clearly the kind of dark character I was playing.

It must have been something else entirely to step into the shoes of someone like that.
Susmita: It was so devastating. I watched a screening the other day…there’s a schism. I cannot feel that, oh, I did that particular scene that way. I don’t know who she is. It’s very overpowering. It’s something rancid. Decay. And yet, from this decay, a flower can be born. It can become so big that it destroys the darkness.

If somebody looks at this movie as a propaganda film…so be it. If to do propaganda is to be able to make a difference, so be it. Who says art has to be something intellectual, something where you just see visuals and soak into the beauty of the frames and feel happy? You’re not paying money just to be happy. If you want to be happy, go dance in the rain, soak in the sun.

Jeffrey: Our film is about a very heavy topic, and we spent a lot of time aesthetically figuring out how to tell the story in a way where people would be inspired to action and not overwhelmed and depressed. You can enjoy the movie as a piece of art but also be inspired to take action. We use all the tools a filmmaker has. There’s a Banksy quote I love. He says, “If Michaelangelo and Leonardo and DaVinci were alive today, they’d be making Avatar, not painting chapel ceilings.” He said, if you really want to change the world and not simply redecorate it, make movies. It’s democratic, and it’s the art form that will change the world.

I feel like our film is already doing that. We’ve literally built 20 schools in Nepal. Nepal had 5,000 schools destroyed in the earthquake. We built 20 with one showing of our film.

It sounds like the amount work you guys are doing is a pretty big sacrifice on your part.
Jeffrey: Susmita came on her own dime from Mumbai. Another actress came from London on her own dime. From L.A., New York. Everyone who’s worked on this film has been touched by meeting these kids, who have gone through this harrowing experience. We’re in the service of them. No kid should be treated as a commodity.

As you said, you want to inspire people with this film. I imagine making it inspiring was difficult considering the awful things we see and hear. It’s a challenging film, too.
Jeffrey: Structurally, I think it’s most similar to The Shawshank Redemption. An innocent is forced into a prison situation. The person who runs the prison is incredibly powerful and corrupt. The innocent person is helping others while trying to figure out how to get out of there. There are many movies about disenfranchised children. Imagine if Slumdog Millionaire had a social agenda. How powerful would that be? We could have gotten thousands of kids educated and out of the slums of India. Why aren’t we using the most powerful art form for good? For me, this is a massive experiment to see how much we can do to help kids.

Susmita, you said something that caught my ear. You mentioned that, if people think this is a propaganda film, then so be it. I think people have certain expectations of what a movie can and should be or do, and they don’t know what to do with movies that exist outside of their definition.
Susmita: It’s not just about that Friday on which a film releases and you’re counting how many people see it and how much money is coming in. This movie was not made for that. The director and producers were very clear from the outset that this movie is not about making them billions. It’s a tool of social change. It starts from your the heart, not your pocket.

Medical propaganda fueled by politics, money, insurance, doctors, and quacks is as common as car commercials in the U.S. The American public is bombarded with what they should or shouldn’t do about their health. Eat eggs they’re healthy. Stay away from eggs they have cholesterol. Shun bread, embrace the gluten-free life. Gluten-free is a fallacy. Get this procedure, see this specialist, explore homeopathy, eat local, go vegan, etc. etc. etc. At this point it’s practically white noise. There is of course one thing no one can argue with: the number one killer in America is heart disease and it’s far more preventable than cancer or accidents. Narrated by Gillian Anderson and directed by Patrick Forbes, The Widowmaker explores this unfortunate statistic in terms of progress in medicine around heart disease, calling out those who have allowed pharmaceutical companies and personal interests to delay the progress of good medicine. It’s a serious and informative documentary, but with its slight penchant toward sensationalism it leaves one wondering how different it is from the proclamations we’re already so used to.

Interspersed throughout The Widowmaker are 9-1-1 calls of people trying to help their spouse or neighbor through heart attacks. Over 700,00o people a year have heart attacks, and the film interviews a few survivors, including Larry King, as well as the spouses and children of people who died of heart attacks, most of them with almost nothing to indicate they had heart disease. The personal narratives bring some much-needed emotion and personal narrative to what would otherwise be a back and forth among medical professionals around the proper way to pre-treat those at risk of heart disease. Even if it is one club of medical professionals pitted against another, the film does at least give everyone a shot.

Julio Palmaz, the man responsible for inventing the balloon-expandable stent reminisces in the garage where he first formed the idea. His invention is given proper accolade and the statistics on how many lives have now been saved due to the option of a heart stent are irrefutable. The film moves on to a doctor in New York who performs thousands of heart stents every year, more than 20 in a day. He works three days a week, makes over 3 million a year, and happily jokes with his unconscious patients that they will be in and out in minutes. Progress in modern medicine, or a cushy and expensive procedure that keeps doctors and medical equipment companies afloat? Thus begins the shift in the film in documenting the not at all new procedure of coronary calcium scanning. Whereas a stent will help a person who catches their heart disease while at the beginning of a heart attack or shortly before one is likely to occur, a calcium scan, if given early, would allow a person to see the total issues of their heart and work toward fixing it. Not with the patchwork agility of the stent, but with a more overarching and long-term focus.

Yet another case of quick fixes verses long-term health. Of course the discussion around health disease is more nuanced than a simple test, diet and exercise are pivotal, but if people had a wider spread knowledge of their options for preventive care the death rate could be cut down significantly. But of course the public needs their “9 out of 10 doctors agree” statements and publicity in order to embrace courses of action. It looks like calcium scanning is finally getting the recognition it needs, but had it started in the early ’90s when many were advocating for it, the number of lives saved would be staggering.

The film is mostly hospital-style clean with aesthetics, strong imagery including an actual heart beating and the usual winding highways that draw the easiest metaphor for the intricacies of the cardiovascular system are included in abundance. Gillian Anderson’s strong voice (and a nice touch using a female to offset what seemed like 100% male doctors) brings gravitas and sincerity to the film’s deluge of facts.

The Widowmaker is thoroughly convincing, and while it clearly advocates for calcium scanning it allows for a full conversation providing advice from a number of esteemed cardiologists with varying view points. Any lay person would do well to do their own research of course, but the information is compelling. After seeing the film a sudden urge for a salad and a walk around the block seems entirely called for.

The Swiss entry into this year’s Foreign Language Film race at the Academy Awards, Sister could work almost as a companion piece to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s masterful The Kid With A Bike. This one also centers itself on a small, stubborn and determined parentless young boy who strikes out on his own, gets into some criminal behavior and develops a surrogate mother/son relationship with a woman he meets by chance. Here, the boy is Simon and is played with remarkable maturity by Kacey Mottet Klein. Simon is well beyond his years, having to grow up quick in order to provide a living for himself and his sister, portrayed by Lea Seydoux. The two live near a ski resort, and every day Simon heads to the top of the slopes in order to steal equipment from those spending their vacation here so that he can profit from selling it off himself.

Directed by Ursula Meier, Sister has clear influences from the Dardenne brothers, particularly in its shooting style. The camera stays close on the characters almost at all times, often giving a documentary feel to its examination of the two of them and their relationship with one another. There’s a shaky subplot with a kitchen worker played by Martin Compston and a much better one with Gillian Anderson’s wealthy resort guest, but the primary focus of the picture remains on Simon and his relationship with his sister Louise.

The two have grown up with one another and spend their days trying to get by, but as Simon has grown more responsible and composed, sacrificing himself every day in order to provide, Louise is nothing but a burden — she relies on Simon for practically everything, spending most of her time with a bevy of men that she picks up and leaves with for days at a time. The co-dependent relationship between the two of them is further put to the test as Simon’s actions begin to receive unwarranted attention and he grows increasingly jealous of the attention that Louise gives to the other men in her life.

Klein’s performance matches his character in being far beyond his years, perhaps even eclipsing the brilliant work from the young Thomas Doret in that similarly told Dardenne picture, but the standout here has got to ultimately be Lea Seydoux. As a young woman struggling with the burdens of moral responsibility and a yearning desire to just be free and wild, there is always more working beneath her exterior than she lets on and when we finally begin to see her facade crack in the later stages, a character who started off quite unlikeable is quickly turned into one I felt great sympathy for.

There’s a whopper of a twist that I wasn’t expecting at all, but I felt it wasn’t utilized as well as it could have been; however, it does add a whole new level to Seydoux’s brilliant work here and makes you re-examine every stroke of her superb performance that came before it. Sister contains two physical fight scenes between Simon and Louise throughout the film, and in the contrast of them you can see the extensive rift that has grown between them over these events. At the beginning, they are playful and loving, rolling around on the floor while jokingly fighting each other for who can have the best sandwich that Simon stole. The later fight though, is violent and dirty, taking place in the filthy mud and featuring the two going at one other with an almost homicidal rage.

The relationship between the two characters at the center here is fascinatingly explored by Meier, but also impressive is the way that she inserts a subtext with the high/low nature of the setting. There’s a very distinct contrast between the clean, white and beautiful setting of the resort that Simon ascends to each morning and the bleak, muddy and ugly bottom of the hill he returns to every night. Not only does the opposing nature provide a look into the class distinction that Meier softly examines, but it also keys into the lost nature of these wandering figures, constantly striving for something more than the squalor they truly exist in. This all adds an impressive extra layer to Sister, while never becoming such a focus that it takes attention away from the true centerpiece which remains the study of this powerful relationship between a brother and sister.