Whores' Glory

Whores' Glory (official website here) is a triptych about prostitution in three locations around the world: Bangkok (Thailand), Faridpur (Bangladesh) and Reynosa (Mexico). We get an inside look at a brothel in each location, meet some of the girls/ladies who work there, some of the folks who are in charge of the girls/ladies, and some of the folks who are customers.
This is the third film that I saw at the festival and all three have been documentaries thus far. I'm figuring out that I like documentaries because I like to learn. I like to understand and I like to know about different components of our world. I specifically like to know about people, their stories, their lives and why they do what they do. People are fascinating.
Brothels and prostitution don't really come up as topics in every day conversations. It's not something that's commonplace in my environment. It really is another unknown that I honestly can say that I have no judgements about. I don't know enough about it to make any judgements about it. I may know what pop culture says about it, but that doesn't make me feel like I actually know anything about the topic.
This documentary did a great job of giving me the chance to hear from people whom I probably will never have a chance to meet and seeing their world. It was amazing what the filmmakers were allowed access to, and just how candid everyone being interviewed was. It wasn't always that I was shocked at what they were saying and their perspective of reality. I mean, I suspected as much to be true, but as I said before, these topics just aren't talked about on a regular basis in my environment so it's pretty stunning to hear so much of it in a concentrated piece.
Not all of it seemed 'sad'. As I thought, some of it seemed to be just another way of life. But, as the film progressed things got more and more grim. The reality of some situations, and hearing the girls speak about their realities was pretty heart-wrenching.
This was a film that would have had a great Q&A. To find out more about the topic, to find out more about the process and how the production team was able to, well, get access to it all. Here's where my thoughts of a strategy for knowing which screenings to attend didn't quite work out. The director was supposed to have attended, however, he just won an award at the Venice Film Festival for this film and so, Venice beat out TIFF. This, I will accept.
Luckily, the film's website is a great place to find out some more information. It is well worth a read.
This film is also well worth a watch.

- picture courtesy of www.tiff.net