Anonymously Yours

'Anonymously Yours' is so powerful in it's sheer, untampered honesty. Candid, unpolished, covertly shot footage corroborates the girls spoken accounts in a very effective parallel manner.

You can see the girl's personal experience come through in their display of emotion, as scenes on location open a world that is truly foreign to western sensibilities.

Very disturbing at times. Very disturbing... though not inappropriate for the viewing audience. The story and scenes from China....! Unbelievable. Just unbelievable. This story needs to be told far and wide. I won't EVER forget this account. What is happening to these girls is a crime of monstrous proportion.

Over the years I've heard men, brave coworkers, boast about their adventurous exploits with the girls in Thailand. What brave men. And where are the girls now these brave men conquered and pawed so courageously? Buried close by some commercial(!) leech pond along the China-Myanmar border? Terrible. Unspeakable. Just terrible.

As a humanitarian exercise, it's hard to imagine a more ambitious and courageous venture than a behind-the-scenes documentary on the women victimized in the Southeast Asian sex trade. It's impossible not to be impressed director's courage in filming women in the repressive state of Burma, and smuggling the film out to be edited and shown to Western audiences. She depicts four young women in detail, allowing them to tell their stories - including rape, violence, abortion and abduction - in their own words, with minimal interruption. The women are in turn calm, animated, spirited, and heartbreakingly, visibly wounded by the abuses they've experienced. One, nicknamed ZuZu, appeared scarcely a teenager but recounter a lifetime of despair, confusion and pain with the mien of an old woman.

The film is an important and impressive one, but had some serious flaws. It's too long for a talking-heads format, and the digital footage - shot surreptitiously under many circumstances - is variable in quality. Because the film jumps back and forth between woman to woman, it's hard to keep the individual stories straight, and a bit more context (on the government, economy, etc.) would have been appreciated.

Still, this is a worthy contribution to the generally woeful state of Western knowledge on the abuses present in the international trade in women.