Think about this for a moment: 27 million people are enslaved around the world right now. These people are forced to work for no pay beyond subsistence. They’re under threat of brutal violence and cannot quit or walk away from their employers.

Most notoriously, they are sex slaves, but modern-day slaves are also doing mundane things, such as making bricks in Pakistan, weaving carpets in India, being domestic servants in cities around the world, working on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic or growing tomatoes in Florida (for Taco Bell no less). Remarkably, there are more people enslaved today than at any other time in human history.

Luckily, persistent and courageous filmmakers have managed to shine a light on this outrage. The Price of Sugar is a testament to what one man can do to make the sugar we pour onto our cereal a little less toxic. Holly offers its own fictional—but very real—revelations about sex slavery in Cambodia, while Dreams Die Hard is its own testament about how hope is universally human.

Fortunately, there are people like National Geographic photographer Jodi Cobb, who bravely went into some dangerous places and returned with stunning photos of slaves at work. Her images (exhibited at the Ah-Haa School) generated an unprecedented reader reaction for the magazine (yet no publisher has taken the important step of consigning her photos for a book).

The Free Press (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) did have the grace to publish a new book by Ben Skinner that is the centerpiece of our programming on this subject. In writing his book, A Crime So Monstrous, Ben traveled to some of the worst places on the planet and witnessed the sales of human beings on four continents—exposing one dark, dank place after another while still managing to find hope and humanity.

He encountered Bill Nathan, who had been enslaved in Haiti. If we’re going to celebrate indomitable spirit at Mountainfilm, then we must celebrate Bill, who has walked through hell and emerged a remarkable young man.

We must also celebrate Maria Suarez, whose odyssey as a slave in Florida—and continuing struggle with the INS—is beyond comprehension. Maria is one of the subjects of Dreams Die Hard, a film by Peggy Callahan. Peggy is a co-founder of Free the Slaves, the leading anti-slave NGO in the U.S., and will be at the Next Step to talk about what they are doing—and what we can do—to end this primitive practice.

There is much to see this weekend, and I urge you to find your way to some of our programming on modern-day slavery. It’s not an easy topic, but as Henry David Thoreau wrote before the Civil War, “…as long as you know of it, you are particeps criminis. What business have you, if you are an ‘angel of light,’ to be pondering over the deeds of darkness….”
- David Holbrooke