Synopsis
Nina is a dancer in Moldova and a single mother, balancing her passion for dance with supporting her mother and little son. Nina is a determined woman beset by trouble on all sides, and we see that she has put her trust in Zina, a wealthy woman who has promised her a well-paying job in Italy.
Despite her mother’s warnings, Nina goes forward with the plan.
As we quickly start to suspect, Zina is not above board. She gathers Nina and several other girls, collecting their passports, and has them driven to a remote meeting spot, where they are handed off to new drivers. She finally arrives at a cottage, where she is held as a prisoner in squalid conditions. She displays strength through this adversity, however. Hoping she will eventually see her son again, while protecting the other, younger girls as they are sold into sex slavery in Serbia. Her handler, Dragan, a vile man, unwittingly leaves a switchblade where she can find it, and it becomes her token of good luck, which she hides from dungeon to dungeon.
Eventually, she lands at a brothel where she meets an ex-Serbian military sniper who has now sold his penchant for killing to the private sector. He pays exorbitantly for her time, and eventually she opens up to him, and even falls in love.
She feels safe with this hitman, and he tells her of the family he lost in the war, and how he is dead inside, looking for companionship.
We almost relate to him.
He turns out to be no different than any of the violent men we have met thus far, and he sells her to another sex trafficker, who puts her on a boat to Italy. On the boat, the slavers pay off the Italian Coast Guard, but stormy seas prevent the ship from reaching shore. The smuggler hands the girls their passports and tells them to swim for the shore, where their next handlers
will find them.
Landing on the shore, surrounding by drowning working girls, Nina feels herself being pulled out of the water, and without thinking, she slashes with the switchblade and runs. She runs until she comes across a small Italian village, where she finds herself being taken in by a priest and some kindly villagers.
A few months later, she is back to Moldova, walking the streets with her little son. She arrives at the house that Zina used to live in. She enters, asking the doorman to see Zina, but he tells her that Zina hasn’t lived there in a long time. Nina seems upset at first, but finds herself
at peace.
She and her son leave, together.