ISFiT Diaries VI - Lilya 4-Ever

Recollections from the International Students’ Festival in Trondheim 2013

A bruised Lilya is running, rather eluding, bare feet with disturbing heavy rock music in the background. She looks numb, insensitive to the physical dimension of pain, a life so torn apart, it cannot bear the light of life – she dies. She reminded me of a couplet by a prolific Urdu poet (in Urdu).  

lai hayat aye, qaza le chali chale,

na apni khushi aye na apii khushi chale

Life brought me here, let death take me away,

I didn’t come at will, it’s not my will to go.

(Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq)

  

Theatrical Release Poster of Lilya 4-Ever.
Source: Google Images

Lilya 4-Ever, starring Oksana Akinshina as Lilya, is a 2002 Swedish-Danish crime drama film and is loosely based on the loosely based on the true case of Lithuanian girl Danguolė Rasalaitė. It was screened at the Vår Frue Church. 

It is a story of (in)human(e) trafficking and sexual slavery. A story so sadistic, it presents to us, the dark monsters we’ve become, it reminds that human morality is at its lowest ebb. It boldly exposes that behind all the glitz and glamour, lie the foundations of modern-day slavery. It brings to light our apathy, and that the noise, the distortions of the modern world has deafened us to the cries of Lilya. It questions us, whether Lilya and many other latent Lilyas die in vain? They died because we did nothing, knowing that there are more slaves than has ever been in human history.

One aspect of the story that struck me was Lilya’s betrayal to the lonely Volodya, replicating what her mother has done to her.

The Vår Frue Church in Trondheim.
Source: Google Images

Source: Google Images

In my opinion, the screening of this movie was one important instant in our education. While, we sit and exchange views on human trafficking in our cozy room at Nova Kino with abundant supplies (thanks to ISFiT and Jay), let us not forget our fellow human beings who brave the miseries of life.