Sometimes documentaries can’t tell a complete story, and that’s where narrative films can be so effective. Filmed on location in Cambodia (a story in itself), Holly tells the tale of a 12-year-old girl whose family sells her into sex slavery. Ron Livingston plays a dissolute, dyspeptic expat American who finds his own missing moral center when he encounters Holly. Producer Guy Jacobson decided to make the film after a trip to Cambodia. “I was walking the street in the middle of the day and found myself surrounded by a group of about 15 little girls, some as young as five, who were very aggressively soliciting me for prostitution. One of the girls said, ‘I yum yum very good, I no money today, mama-san boxing me.’” These exact words show up in the Holly screenplay as fiction, but, sadly, we know they are all too real.
—David Holbrooke