THANK YOU GEORGE CLOONEY

I actually had another post planned for today but I just found out about an upcoming documentary executive produced by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney and I was too excited not to write about it.

The movie is called "Playground" and I think it is going to blow the lid off of awareness around child sex trafficking, especially in the United States. Here's some background on how the project came about in the first place:

"While traveling to the Philippines in 2001, filmmaker Libby Spears gained first hand knowledge of the horrific practice of trafficking human beings for the purpose of sexual exploitation. She examined a little deeper, and discovered that most of these victims were young children.

Facing death threats to be “knocked off” for only $10, Libby went undercover to infiltrate brothels in South Korea and Thailand. She held first-hand interviews with victims, their pimps, and their abusers. She mapped the trafficking routes of the sex tourism industry, and charted the commerce fueled by the purchase and sale of minors—she was disheartened to find that virtually the entire globe was involved and affected by this growing industry.

What she was astonished to find, however, was the involvement of the United States and the degree to which they were influencing the global demand and growth of the sex trafficking industry.

Previously, she had mistakenly believed that sex trafficking was primarily an “international” occurrence in countries like Philippines and Cambodia. But a meeting with Ernie Allen, President of the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, confirmed to Libby what her research was beginning to uncover: that the trafficking of children for commercial sexual exploitation is every bit as real in North America.

This is where Playground begins."

Besides having the backing of Hollywood powerhouses Soderbergh and Clooney, the documentary will include music by Bjork, Radiohead, Chris Martin, Blonde Redhead, Cat Power, Sigur Rós, CocoRosie, Basement Jaxx, DJ Shadow, Kazu Makino.

You can tell, even by the preview below, that this is going to be one of the hardest things you've ever had to see. But I hope that you do. And I'm committing right now to do whatever I can to make people aware of this film, and urge them to see it. By pretending this doesn't exist we are only hurting the children we should most want to protect.

Could this be the film that marks the beginning of the end for the child sex industry in America?