I Am Slave

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

When a young girl, a princess in the African village she comes from, is abducted and sold as a slave at a very young age, she finds the formative years of her adult life spent being exploited by doing hours and hours of work, for little to no pay, finally ending up being used by a foreign diplomat and his wife, with her passport taken from her and a stark warning to remain indoors unless told she may leave. Trapped in this impossibly desperate situation, she may finally be about to find an unexpected means of escape.

Preceded by an eye opening real life expose of modern 'domestic slavery' in Britain, where desperate immigrants are largely exploited by foreign diplomats, this drama from Channel 4 is largely drawn from real life experiences and serves as a stark expose of what's going on under our noses with very little entertainment value. That said, it's a very well made film, perfectly capturing an atmosphere of isolation, tension and hopelessness. Though it's largely silent, the expression of the lead actress captures more than a million words. All together, though, it doesn't quite get under the skin of it's subject quite as much as it could, but it's still quite an effective piece with a lot of food for thought. ***

Like other reviewers, I am appalled at what that idiot Demitrius has written. What an insensitive and ignorant person he is!

I am Slave is listed on IMDb as a thriller but, for what my opinion is worth, it should also be listed as a documentary. I acknowledge that depends on how true the story actually is of course - but I am taking into account the notes at the beginning of the closing credits. I don't believe that this sort of thing is exclusive to Sudan either. After all, it happened in huge numbers a couple of centuries ago in West Africa when thousands of black natives were "exported" as slaves to the Americas.

This movie should be compulsory viewing in schools so that our children can learn about the inhumanities that man shows to man. Maybe it will incense many, as it did me, to strive in whatever small way they can to end this sort of thing. We live in relative luxury in western society and many turn a blind eye to atrocities right on our own doorsteps and it isn't good enough!

What's even worse is that the people Malia was enslaved to could just as easily paid her a fair wage and made her part of their family and, at least, given her a reasonable life and some dignity (bearing in mind that they didn't abduct her in the first place - they were "given" her by her evil mistress's evil sister.) Did those loathsome women derive some sort of sadistic pleasure from their treatment of a submissive young woman for whom a simple smile was an effort?

I have rated this film 9 - not for the acting or the cinematography or the directing (all of which are OK by the way) but for the MESSAGE - which is why I believe it should be categorised as a documentary. Certainly not light entertainment but, equally certainly, compulsive viewing!

I am shocked at the comments of demetrius11. Obviously you haven't seen enough slavery movies out there to understand that most of them only have violence in them. We've seen all of that before. I am slave brings another perspective to the issue. And you most certainly do not understand one bit how it is to be separated from your family and on a land where you know nobody and there is no way for you to reach your family and know if they are alive. I would love to see you spend one week in a small room with no food, no light nor human contact. I cannot blame you. Even I do not understand how lucky I am to be living the way I do.

I want to say that there is a point in human affairs at which the principle concern in producing a work of art is that it is needed. For those reviewers too sophisticated to recognize the colossal issue and disgraceful fact of still-existing slavery, surely they can find aesthetic objections within this film. Reviewers, such the previous, from the North, may also comment that the film represents a political manipulation designed to vilify a faction and glorify another. In the event that the documentation of injustice casts a negative light on another group unjustly treated, then perhaps it is best to document no injustice at all. I am certain that it is the case that over 90% if the American public are unaware of the endurance, and record breaking prevalence, of the international slave trade, an industry that remains perfectly compatible with capitalism worldwide, since the enormity of it as a problem is routinely swept under the rug while the personal nuances of overpaid actors and athletes become our daily bread.

In the bonus features the makers of the film assert that they wanted to make a film about a human story rather than a story about the issue of slavery. To me this is an artificial separation. Slavery IS a human story particularly when dealing with a specific case and since the whole circumstance of this girl is about her slavery you cannot but tackle the issue as well. By making the characters so black and white it detracts from rather than adding to the realism. The unrelenting cruelty by otherwise "normal" people isn't explored properly because in real life such people convince themselves that what they're doing isn't cruel at all. Exploring these characters in greater depth would have forced the film to examine the issue more deeply and made the human story that much more powerful and realistic. Definitely worth watching despite these caveats.