Please join us for our special screening followed by Q&A with
RUCHIRA GUPTA
Founder, Apne Aap Women Worldwide
SHANDRA WOWORUNTU
International human trafficking advocate
Founder of Mentari
5:30 p.m. | Registration
6:30 p.m. | Film Screening
8:30 p.m. | Q+A and Reception
Screening begins promptly at 6:30 p.m.
Dolby 88 Screening Room
1350 Avenue of the Americas (at West 55th Street)
Lobby Level
New York, NY 10019
SPECIALLY PRICED LIMITED TICKETS
General Admission | First-come, first-served : $25
Price includes wine and hors d'oevres reception
To commemorate UN World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, the United Nations Association of New York presents a special screening of LOVE SONIA, an award-winning film on the trafficking of girls from India to Los Angeles. Starring Frieda Pinto, Demi Moore, and Mark Duplass, the film is a searing account of courage, and was made with the help of survivors from the Indian anti-trafficking organization, Apne Aap Women Worldwide.
Rooted in real events, Love Sonia tracks the traumatic journey of Sonia, an innocent teenage village girl from a poor farming family in northern India. Pressured by family debts, a domineering father and a wicked local land baron, Sonia is tricked and coerced into prostitution while searching for her beloved sister Preeti in Mumbai.
After months of being ground down, brutalized and exploited by her odious pimp, Sonia is packed into a freight container and shipped across the world to service clients in Hong Kong and Los Angeles. But during a sex party for Hollywood high-rollers, she finally spots a chance to break free and seize back control of her life, with support from anti-trafficking charities.
In this challenging journey that takes us through the red light areas of Mumbai, we witness the latent innocence of a young woman and the grit necessary for rescuing her sister while keeping her own dignity intact...
Tabrez Noorani, a producer for films such as The Life of Pi and the Academy Award-winner Slumdog Millionaire, was inspired to direct Love Sonia after he was introduced to the severity of human trafficking in Los Angeles in 2003, when some girls were found in a shipping container from China. One of them was a young Indian girl. The incident inspired Noorani to work with non-governmental organizations focused on trafficking in Los Angeles. “It’s a story that needs to be told,” he said, “to show the plight of these girls, what they go through.” He's also said to have participated in several brothel raids.
Please join us for this special summer engagement in our Film Talk series, which will include a food and wine reception and a post-screening Q+A with guests Shandra Woworuntu, an international human trafficking advocate and founder of Mentari, and writer and activist Ruchira Gupta, founder of Apne Aap Women Worldwide.
GUEST SPEAKERS
RUCHIRA GUPTA
Ruchira Gupta is a feminist campaigner, writer, and visiting professor at New York University, and founder of Indian anti-sex trafficking organization, Apne Aap Women Worldwide. With Apne Aap, she has helped more than 20,000 girls, women and their family members exit prostitution systems.
Ruchira testified to the U.S. Senate for the passage of the first U.S. Trafficking Victim Protection Act. After the infamous 16 December bus rape, she led sex abuse survivors to push for a new Indian anti-trafficking law. She advocated for the creation of the Trafficking Fund for Survivors at the United Nations by addressing the UN General Assembly and taking survivors to speak there, and to appear before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
She has won an Emmy award, the Clinton Global Citizen award, the UN NGO CSW Woman of Distinction of Award, and the highest French civilian distinction, Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite (Knight of the National Order of Merit).
Ruchira has edited two anthologies: River of Flesh & Other Stories: The Prostituted Woman in Indian Short Fiction, and As If Women Matter: The Essential Gloria Steinem Reader. She is the editor of a SAGE-published bi-annual journal, Antyajaa: Indian Journal of Women and Social Change. Her work is being archived in the Stanford Library.
Her dream is to create a world in which no human being is bought or sold.
Follow her on twitter @RuchiraGupta and on Facebook: Ruchira Gupta
Visit the Apne Aap website
SHANDRA WOWORUNTU
Shandra Woworuntu is an international advocate and leader in the fight of human trafficking. She is a motivational and inspirational keynote speaker in raising awareness about human rights. She trains law enforcement, attorneys, social workers, medical practitioners and businesses. She also lectures university students across the country and internationally.
Shandra is the founder of Mentari (Indonesian for “Sun”), an organization which mentors and empowers survivors of violence, abuse, exploitation and trafficking to be able to reintegrate into their communities and to live independently. It assists survivors individually and collectively through direct services, resources, empowerment, advocacy and mentorship (DREAM).
Herself a survivor of human trafficking and domestic violence, Shandra now lends her voice in fighting human trafficking and modern-day slavery through raising awareness, education, advocacy, legislation lobbying, mentorship and empowerment.
As a lobbyist, Shandra testified at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in New York State, and also testified at a NYC budget hearing to raise funding for services, and to lobby federal or state bills to passed and become laws. In 2013 she was appointed by Governor Chris Christie to be a state commissioner on human trafficking in New Jersey, and in 2015 was appointed by Barack Obama to be a member of the First U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking to the Presidential Integration Task Force.
Shandra holds a bachelor degree in finance and banking management.
Visit the Mentari website
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