CHILDREN OF THE DARK (Japan, 2008)
Directed by: Junji Sakamoto
Starring: Yosuke Eguchi, Aoi Miyazaki, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Koichi Sato

WARNING: this movie contains more horrible things per second than any movie we have ever shown before. Approach with caution. There’s no way to unsee this movie, and that’s probably as it should be for a film about child trafficking. Already kicking up a ruckus, this Japanese drama is based on a novel by Yon Sogil, and it was shot in Thailand and initally released on just seven Japanese screens. That screen count increased to 102 after the film was forced out of the Bangkok International Film Festival and became an international cause celebre when it was banned in Thailand. In the West, however, it has screened at just a handful of film festivals and has been turned down by most of the rest, which is bizarre for a movie by acclaimed arthouse auteur Sakamoto (FACE) starring two of Japan’s hottest stars, Aoi Miyazaki and Satoshi Tsumabuki. 

Middle-aged Japanese expat journalist Nanbu (Yosuke Eguchi) is stationed in Thailand and when he’s told that kids are being sold on the black market for their organs he’s initially suspicious but soon he sniffs out a real story. Cut to: Aoi Miyazaki as fresh-faced Keiko who has come to Thailand to work for an NGO. Her Thai colleagues label her a poverty tourist, and they’re not wrong. She crosses paths with Nanbu when they’re tipped off about a child sex brothel in Northern Thailand where kids are “processed”: some sold to tourists who have come to Thailand for a cheap organ transplants, the others sold to tourists who have come to Thailand for a roll in the hay with an eight-year-old.

Tasteless? Perhaps, but so is pedophilia. This movie is a howl of outrage, and it forces us to stare at sights most of us would rather not see. But at the same time it doesn’t let anyone off the hook. The Thai crooks are vicious in their use and abuse of poor kids, but the poor kids turn on each other at the drop of a hat. Keiko really might be in it for her own ego gratification, and Nanbu just might be the biggest monster of all, exploiting the exploitation of children to further his own career (and maybe even worse). That doesn’t mean they can’t do some good, but it’s strong medicine for audiences accustomed to Hollywood movies about social issues where you can tell the good guys from the bad. In this movie, everyone is bad and the world is a fallen place, sick with sin. It’s not anything a film festival audience wants to hear, but that’s why we’re showing it: there’s nothing else like it out there.