International Boulevard
Directed By Rebecca Dharmapalan
Around the world today women and girls are experiencing modern day slavery. Girls as young as 8 years old, and younger, are being trafficked into the sex trade industry. Here in the U.S., between 300,000 and 400,000 children are at risk every day. We created this documentary with the immense help of our community leaders to raise the much needed awareness around child sex trafficking. In California, and the Bay Area especially, we have some of the highest rates of sex trafficking in the country. We wanted to understand how this all happens. We ventured to International Boulevard, right in our backyard, to uncover the truth behind the commercial sexual exploitation of children throughout our city, and more importantly; the world.
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About the filmmaker
Rebecca Dharmapalan was featured as one of Teen Vogue’s “21 under 21,” and one of Glamour’s 2017 “College Women of the Year.” In 2016 she gave a TEDxTeen talk about sex trafficking and the dehumanization of women of color. She credits the Girls Impact the World Film Festival with “launching my career as a social activist and changemaker.” Her short film International Boulevard, which won the Grand Prize at the Girls Impact the World Film Festival in 2013, took a hard look at sex trafficking in her city of Oakland, California. She chaired the city’s youth commission, which made sex trafficking its #1 priority. “We created a billboard campaign, and the film is now played as a public service announcement in schools,” she said. “It’s made immense changes in the dialogue around sex trafficking. This issue is no longer something that happens ‘over there’ far, far away.” Rebecca is currently making a feature-length documentary about sex trafficking .
