The Whistleblower is a 2011 thriller film directed by Larysa Kondracki, written by Kondracki and Eilis Kirwan, starring Rachel Hannah Weisz as Kathryn Bolkovac, debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in 2010. The film was based on the true story of human trafficking by employees of contractor DynCorp. During its premiere, the intense depiction of the treatment meted out to victims by the kidnappers made a woman in the audience faint. This film will be hits theaters on August 5th.
The film tells the story of Kathryn Bolkovac, an American former police investigator from Lincoln, Nebraska, who in 1999 accepted a $100,000 one-year contract to work for the U.N. International Police Force monitor in Bosnia.
Originally hired by the U.S. company DynCorp in the framework of a U.N.-related contract, she filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for unfair dismissal due to a protected disclosure (whistleblowing), and on 2 August 2002 the tribunal unanimously found in her favor. DynCorp had a $15 million contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia at the time she reported such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking. Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia. Bolkovac's story was made into a film. She has also co-authored a 2011 book with Cari Lynn The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors And One Woman's Fight For Justice.
After establishing Kathy (Weisz) as a single mom hoping to make enough money to move closer to her daughter, the film ships her off to Sarajevo, where she heads the org's Gender Office, working with local cops to investigate rape, domestic abuse and sex trafficking.
Idealistic Kathy is determined to do her part in healing the war-torn nation; her arrival produces immediate results, earning her the approbation and friendship of Madeleine Rees (Vanessa Redgrave), head of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, as well as the romantic attentions of a fellow agent (Nikolaj Lie Kaas). But her job becomes far more difficult when she learns that local bar owners are trafficking women, and that her U.N. colleagues are not only abetting the dirty trade but also visiting the brothels regularly.
Bolkovac collected the names of almost 100 girls who were involved in the sex-trafficking ring. “I think the viciousness and atrocities committed against these girls by people who would be thrown in prison in a heartbeat in other countries is outrageous. When you hear about coin deutschmarks being inserted into girls’ vaginas while they’re dancing on stages, how can anyone be so degraded?”
Kathy sets out to expose this corrupt operation -- no easy task, given that all U.N. employees are granted diplomatic immunity, and the head of the repatriation program (Monica Bellucci, more haggard than usual) is useless to the point of complicity. Kathy's determination is strengthened by the plight of two Ukrainian sex slaves, Raya (Roxana Condurache) and Irka (Rayisa Kondracki), whom she encourages to testify against their captors, with devastating consequences.
Even still, the film takes pains to do right by Irka and especially Raya (played with agonizing vulnerability by Condurache), regarding them with dignity under even the most nightmarish of circumstances. One especially grueling scene of torture in the brothels arguably crosses the line and will have viewers squirming in their seats, yet one always senses a storyteller trying to do justice to the scenario's horrors rather than exploit them.
Low-budget production was shot over 36 days, primarily in Bucharest, Romania. Rounding out the fine cast are Jeanette Hain as Raya's mother and David Strathairn as a U.N. associate who comes into play during the surprisingly suspenseful sequence that caps the picture.
According to Huffingtonpost, Rachel Weisz says : "My favorite genre of movie -- if you could call it a genre, because there's not so many of them out there -- would be the ordinary woman doing the extraordinary thing, the David vs. Goliath-style fighting, one lone woman fighting injustice,", "And I love it, I love that kind of thriller, the ordinary person who, because of their character, it's their character that leads them. As an actor, that's a kind of gift."
“It wasn’t just a thriller about a scandal. For me, it was a kind of character study. What I like about Kathy is she’s a real person. She had two failed marriages and she lost custody of her kids. She wasn’t an angel or a heroine at that point. She was just a very good police officer. But she went to Sarajevo and did this incredible, heroic thing,” she says.
“I might have kept my head down and taken the paycheque and gone home. I would’ve been scared. I think it takes someone with a particular kind of nature to do something like that and I believe that stories like that should be told.”