Courtesy - The Sunday Leader By Sumaya Samarasinghe
The film begins with two teenage Ukrainian girls Raya and Irka being lured away from their homes under some false pretenses to Bosnia.
The next scene shows Kathryn Bolkovac played by the stunning Rachel Weisz, a police officer from Nebraska. She is a quiet, intense woman well respected by her work colleagues who is going through a personal trauma of her own; Kathryn has lost custody of her only daughter.The teenager is being taken away to Atlanta by her ex husband and his new family as he accuses his ex wife of being “married to her job” and implies that she is an unfit mother.
When her job transfer request to Atlanta fails, she decides to take up a financially lucrative position as a United Nations Peace keeping officer in post war Bosnia in order to save up enough money to move closer to her daughter.
Hired by Democra Corp which is a pseudonym for the DynCorp, a US based global government services contractor; Kathryn finds herself in post war Bosnia and her cool and fearless attitude makes her investigate a case of domestic violence which would have gone untouched by her cynical co-workers.
Soon, she is offered a post by Madeleine Rees, the head of the United Nations Human Rights Commission and asked to join the United Nations Gender Affairs Office which works alongside the local police in investigating rape, domestic abuse and sex trafficking.
The idealistic Kathryn seems to be the only character in the film who truly has faith in her mission. One day, she finds in the sordid rooms of a seedy bar which has just been raided where the “waitresses” are obviously underage prostitutes and too terrified to talk.
Kathryn begins to walk through the joint and is appalled by what she sees. The floor is littered with used condoms and evidence shows that the girls are tied up and gang raped. Photos of the abuse are stuck all over the walls and some of the abusers are her own colleagues. Meanwhile, she comes into contact with the severely beaten up Raya and Irka and is suddenly thrown into the world of sex slavery and human trafficking.
Despite a thorough investigation, Kathryn receives no support from her colleagues who all except for one Bosnian policeman are completely crooked. Even the head of the UN repatriation programme Laura Leviani, played by a cold and heartless Monica Bellucci, refuses to help Raya and Irka go back home as their passports have been confiscated by those who kidnapped them!
But Kathryn stubbornly continues to defy the boy’s club which seems linked with a pact of silence and the more she pursues her investigation, the harder the UN tries to silence her while the guilty peacekeepers are mysteriously sent on “leave”. Finally, Kathryn’s position is terminated.
But Bolkovac who seems completely untouched by threats and the possibility of putting herself into grave danger as she conducts most of her investigations alone; will not allow herself to be intimidated.
Some of the scenes in The Whistleblower are disgusting , sickening and depressing; and the fact that something so morally wrong as human trafficking goes unpunished by an organization like the United Nations seems nearly unbelievable.
First time Canadian director Larysa Kondracki gives her film a documentary like feel. She was smart at resisting the temptation of making Rachel Weisz physically too attractive, nor did Kondracki transform her into some kind of action junky who can physically fight off a bunch of men. She is just a good, methodical and honest human being who believes in her job, even more since she gets to know the background of some of the victims. The director even avoided lingering on the possibility that Kathryn is projecting her failed motherhood skills on the young prostitutes she rescues.
Though the film has been categorized as “fiction”, The Whistleblower is based on the real life experience of Kathryn Bolkovac who did go as a peacekeeper to post war Bosnia and whose claims against Dyn Corp were supported by British Courts. Despite all this Dyn Corp continues to be employed by the US government in several countries including Iraq and Afghanistan. The Whistleblower is a difficult film to watch because of its theme and scenes of physical violence and abuse.
