A WHORE LIKE ME

A WHORE LIKE ME

A WHORE LIKE ME
[Zona Kamoni]

Director: Yael Shachar, Sharon Yaish / Israel / 2019

Category: Human Rights, Women’s Rights, Society

Production: Elad Peleg, Haggai Arad: Daroma Productions, for Yes-Docu, Commissioning Editor: Guy Lavie, Israel.
Supported by The New Fund for Cinema and Television (NFCT), Israel.

Language: Hebrew, Hungarian.

Subtitles: English

Length: 62 minutes

When Chilla was 22, she was kidnapped from a pub in Hungary and sold to a group of traffickers. Twenty years later, Chilla is a different woman, one who has managed to get out of the drug abuse cycle, celebrating 10 years of sobriety, and volunteering at the Levinsky Clinic in Tel Aviv to try and help women on the street. When the Ministry of Interior in Israel refus-es to give Chilla a resident certificate and to believe that she is a victim of traf-ficking in women, she goes looking for her kidnappers to obtain proof. The journey to the past forces Chilla to return to the scene of prostitution, only this time with a little more power and a camera in hand. Chilla begins to document and work through the trauma, but can you go back to your most painful place and stay alive?

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Director's statement:
We have been following Chilla for a period of two years, in her rehabilitation and her return to prostituting. We had the access and her complete trust to tell her story. We realized Chilla’s “choice” to return to prostituting is somehow similar to addiction, and prostituting is an unconscious reenactment of the physical and mental abuse she had suffered. We did not know how will Chilla’s journey end. We did not know if she will succeed in putting herself back together. But Chilla is a woman who won’t stop fighting for a better life. She talks about prostitution not only in anger but also in compassion. Her tremendous courage of returning to the most painful place was an inspiration for us, a reminder of the huge potential of the human soul to heal itself.
Prostitution exists for thousands of years, and it managed to survive and even flourish nowadays. In the more liberal part of of the world, in countries that are considered as the spearhead in the fight for human rights protection. Our film tries to show what prostitution really looks like, and how it serves as a reflection for men and women’s relationships in general. Chilla tries to educate her male clients, and by doing this she tries to educate us, the audience.

Movie Reviews:
* « Sharon Yaish and Yael Shachar’s A Whore Like Me, benefits from an instantly gripping, thriller-like premise. An impressively rich portrait of a woman who’s been failed by society at every turn. » Docaviv continues to thrive in increasingly challenging circum-stances. / Paul O'Callaghan / Slant Magazine

* « The film "A Whore Like Me" illustrates in a sharp, poignant and unmasked way the exist-ence of a woman in prostitution. » Shany Littman / Haaretz daily newspaper

Festivals & Awards:

  • Budapest Jewish and Israeli Film Festival, Hungary 2021
  • Best Documentary Feature Film Award: ITWIFF Imagine This Women's International Film Festival, NYC, USA 2020
  • WTFF Radical Award: Women Texas Film Festival, USA 2020
  • LA Women In Film Festival, USA 2020
  • Best Documentary Film Award: up to 60-minutes: Israel Academy Awards (The Ophir Awards) 2019
  • Best Documentary Film Award: up to 60-minutes: Israel Documentary Awards 2019
  • Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival, Israel 2019

WTFF Radical Award at Women Texas Film Festival:
Jury's justification: "The film and filmmaking were brave, mature, and extremely well told, radical in how they treated the subject. There was courage in making that film."

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