Matrioshki - Mädchenhändler

This fine Belgian series deals with an issue that has become so common in today's Europe. Eastern European girls and women are promised a decent job in the West, but they end up as prostitutes. Girls' credulity and and poor conditions in homeland lead its victims into modern slave trade business. It will be very easy to guess where the word 'slave' has come as it did not originally mean 'slave'.

Girls who have ended up into business have no other chance than to obey their masters and this is also shown in the series. There are however some cunning girls who attempt to escape their fate, but not much is there to do. Girls also have different attitudes towards their work. Yes - there are some, like a Russian girl named Kalinka, who don't think it's eventually bad to become stripper, if they have it no way better at home. But there are also girls like Lithuanian Daria, who is totally against the business and only wants to get back home. Some girls think they have found a boyfriend in their pimps, but are unfortunately mistaken. They all realize before long that they are just used for the business like batteries and then thrown away.

I've never seen anything like this on television and it may well be my first Belgian series I ever seen. Matroesjka's category is crime, but it presents the crime from victims viewpoint. It gives a completely different view to the world of prostitution than Boogie Nights does., though both are great in their own sense. Matroesjka's does not contain moralizing overtones, for it just tells a plain story of these women. There are even found 'goodies' in the pimps too, or lesser evils anyway. Everything in Matroesjka's is very enjoyable viewing, for some of the girls are really cool when they try to rise above their inhuman conditions.

Wow!! The first Belgium TV series I've seen & i'm already impressed by the 1st episode. The production standards were indeed high. And the subject matter...Wheewe! Heavy stuff. Now that is what television should do, educate, while entertain (for want of a better word). We always read about the European slave trade with girls vanishing from Eastern European countries & I've seen a few documentaries on the subject, but to see it scripted as a drama is altogether another thing. I must express my ignorance in that i didn't realise that criminals from Belgium were involved, I thought it was mainly a Russian mafia thing.

Very impressed & I'm glad we have a station like SBS that show intelligent programs like this from around the world. I definitely will track down the DVD & lend to friends too lazy to watch it late on Friday nights.

The Danish crime show, Rejseholdet is also screening & is also of high standard. The stories are more realistic & don't necessarily end upbeat like the US shows. More meat & potatoes than fairy floss.

Do these kind of programs ever show on US television?

Fantastic, I just had to vent my approval somewhere... Ha!

In this series some young Russian and Lituanian girls are recruited by some Belgians with the promise that they will earn a lot of money as dancers (not as strippers) and that they will be able to build a better future for themselves and their families. But from the beginning on the problems start: their contracts are in Greek, they are first sent to a nightclub on Cyprus and they soon realize that their situation won't get any better. But what they don't even know yet is that they will not only have to strip. They will also have to work as prostitutes and they will never be free for as long as they work in the nightclubs...

I've been working as a policeman in Belgium Antwerp for many years now and often deal with slavery like this. so i'm glad some people took it upon them to make a series about it. Making Belgian people very much aware of what is going on.

I must say that the item is worked out very well and from my point of view as a policeman it's very adequate. although the end-scene is somewhat a loose-end to the series as viewing all the facts decisions are not wright. But that's the policeman speaking, no one else cares.

the series are great because of the dialogs in mostly Antwerp-dialect. if you see it in your language or subtitled it will loose much of it's originality, i'm afraid.

None the less, you have to see this one. It's already sold to 30 foreign TV-stations and will be broad-casted soon. This must mean that the series are great.

I agree that it is a good and very realistic film. It should be shown on TV in all Eastern European countries, so that the girls who might be tempted to go to the West, would know what to expect. However, I would like to ask a question to the previous commenting viewer who said that in this film "we see the positive and negative sides of buying and selling women.." POSITIVE sides? Excuse me, what are the positive sides of a slave trade? Maybe you didn't mean it, but your statement sounds like coming from somebody who regularly uses that sort of parlours and does not mind if those who "work" there, are being abused - as long as he gets "what he paid for". Very sad to read.

I normally don't comment on TV-series but I'm gladly making an exception for our highly prestigious Belgian series "Matroesjka's". This unquestionably is the greatest, most ambitious project ever in this country and I dare to say that it could easily compete with world-class series such as "The Sopranos" or "Alias". A common mistake Belgian writers usually make is that they try very hard to make their premise look Hollywoodian, yet "Matroesjka's" isn't like that. On the contrary, the sex industry is a typical Belgian issue and our country often serves as the turn-table for this kind of crimes. And this series is an intelligent and detailed portrait of it all: raw, often shocking and thought-provoking. "Matroesjka's" centers on a criminal organisation that yearly travels to the poorest ex-Russian countries in order to recruit young girls as dancers for their Antwerp nightclub. The girls are promised big money and a more bright future, but in reality they'll serve for erotic dance-acts and even prostitution. Tired of their pitiable life conditions, ten attractive young girls sign a false contract that literally makes them the property of Ray van Mechelen and his relentless gang of small thugs, deranged psychos and violent aggressors. The rest of the carefully constructed screenplay focuses on the gangsters' interactions with each other (blackmail, betrayal, executions…) as well as with corrupt police detectives and the attempts of a sole journalist trying to publicly unmask the crime network.

"Matroesjka's" exist out of 10 episodes, which comes down to approximately 500 minutes of footage. Yet, there is not one dull moment and every episode becomes more fascinating. The series obviously disposed of a large budget but every cent is well-used! The detailed preceding research to the plotting is flawless while the set pieces and costumes and highly efficient. Most of the chapters are entirely filmed in Belgium, but the actual recruitment of the girls takes place in pauperized Russian wastelands and one episode is filmed in Cyprus where the girls received their "training". The makers put a lot of effort in making their series appear real! The unfortunate girls are actual Russian actresses that only speak English when necessary and with heavy accents. Even the Belgian actors are allowed to speak in their ugly Antwerp dialects and that only increases the naturalness and credibility of the series. Can you imagine dangerous thugs talking correct and without swearing?? Talking about the cast: every Flemish actor that ever meant something in the world of theater or cinema is involved in this project. It's an all-star cast, world famous…in Belgium. Most of them play the roles of their lives, more particularly Peter van den Begin as the head of the organization and Tom Van Dyck as the deranged, trigger happy lunatic.

"Matroesjka's" contains several sequences that are stuffed with exploitative violence and gratuitous nudity…But what else do you expect from an allegory focusing on mafia crimes like this! It's a tough world and if you have the ambition of telling a story about it: you better make it realistic. Luckily, the whole production was realized without having to worry about censorship or ratings which are very important in a shock-portrait like this. Our country doesn't mean that much in the field of television or cinema but "Matroesjka's" undeniably is a brilliant piece of instant cult-entertainment. The news got out that the series already has been sold to several other European countries and TV-stations so, in case you soon encounter it dubbed in French, German, Spanish, English or whatever; please remember where it originally came from.