Viko (2009)

Directed by Larysa Kondracki

Former Yugoslavia. 1997. 17 year old VIKO shares a squalid, cramped apartment with his family, all struggling for survival. His only joy is with his girlfriend LILA, and their dream of escaping to London. When his older brother, IVAN, finally offers him some black market work, that dream suddenly seems within reach. Enlisted as a driver for his brother, Viko hopes to make his money and go. But instead, Viko is drawn into a web of sex-trafficking, when he is forced to stand in for a 'disappeared' member of the gang. Overnight, he is brought into the belly of an organization he might never escape. And into a role from which he may never recover. The story of a boy's induction into a sex-trafficking ring, VIKO explores the devastating effect of violence on victim and perpetrator alike.