Brownstein: Montreal director tackles sex trafficking in harrowing CBC documentary – Mid North Monitor
Nov 08, 2023
“There are hundreds and hundreds of victims across the country,” Viveka Melki says of young people being used as commodities by traffickers.
Montreal filmmaker Viveka Melki doesn’t shock easily, certainly not after depicting the horrors Canadian soldiers endured in Hong Kong during the Second World War in her 2020 documentary The Fence. But Melki found herself shocked again in undertaking her latest doc, Trafficked Voices, in which she focuses on sex trafficking in Canada.
Frank and frightening, Trafficked Voices premières Wednesday at 8 p.m. on CBC’s The Passionate Eye and will then stream on CBC Gem.
Although Melki and most others may have assumed that trafficked women and men in Canada mostly come from outside the country, the stark reality is that 93 per cent are in fact Canadians. The vast majority are women from all walks and cultural backgrounds and frequently as young as 14.
