The Whistleblower (2010) on Netflix
R20101h 52mActionBiographyCrime
In 1999, Nebraska police officer Kathryn Bolkovac takes a United Nations peacekeeping post in post-war Bosnia to earn money to be near her teenage daughter. She uncovers a sex trafficking ring.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.1/1037,434 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1999, in Nebraska, the police officer Kathryn Bolkovac sees the chance to raise money to be close to her teenage daughter, who lives with her father in another state, with the temporary assignment serving as U.N. peacemaker in Bosnia. The idealistic Kathryn believes that she can make the difference in a country devastated by the war, and she works hard and is promoted to director of her department. But soon she discloses a corruption and human trafficking ring with the direct participation of contractors and diplomats that have diplomatic immunity and she does not know who is reliable.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Whistleblower (2010)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Larysa Kondracki and Eilis Kirwan first heard of Kathryn Bolkovac's story as students at Columbia University, eight years before the film was made, and Bolkovac sold Kondracki the rights to her story for $100.
- Much of the film's rape scene was cut out afterwards: its brutality made a viewer faint during the first screening of The Whistleblower in Toronto.
- Kondracki said the film is broadly accurate but leaves things out: the three-week breaking-in period traffickers used on new victims was never shown.
- For legal reasons the contractor at the center of the story, DynCorp International, is called Democra Security in the film, the company whose employees were reported to have kept the women as sexual slaves.
- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hosted a screening and promised action on trafficking, but The Guardian reported that other UN officials played down what the film depicted and that anti-trafficking initiatives in Bosnia were dropped.
- Rachel Weisz turned the script down in 2007 because she was pregnant, then found the story would not leave her, called producer Amy Kaufman back and signed on in August 2009, two months before shooting began.
