DIRECTORS’ STATEMENT
There are more than 45 million people living in modern slavery worldwide today, including over 18,000 children enslaved to fishermen on Lake Volta in Ghana - where our film takes place. Despite its prevalence, the personal stories of those affected by modern slavery mostly go untold.
THE RESCUE LIST follows two young survivors of modern slavery, Peter and Edem, as they work to heal from their trauma and reunite with their families. For Peter, the path to recovery includes aiding in the rescue of his best friend who is still enslaved on the lake, while Edem grapples with grief surrounding the disappearance of his best friend. Helping these boys is former child slave turned rescuer, Kwame Addo, and a team of social workers at a rehabilitation shelter where the boys attend school and receive therapy along with 50 other rescued children.
Our goal as filmmakers was to shine a light on modern slavery in a way that connected audiences to the humanity and dignity of the film’s participants, rather than dwelling in their suffering. We also wanted to empower the children in our film by telling the story from their perspectives, but it was of critical importance to us that their recoveries be paramount. We decided to make the film observationally, intimately portraying our protagonists’ day-to-day lives in recovery, rather than focusing on their past. Edem’s opening monologue grew out of our observational approach; his powerful testimony was a direct result of completing the shelter’s therapy program, which we depicted in the film, and it set the stage for the observational story that unfolds. By bearing witness to their daily lives, we sought to provide the children with a forum to tell their own stories through their words and actions, as and when they were ready. This observational process of discovery revealed facets of the story we did not anticipate, for example, the deep bonds of friendship formed by the children on the lake. By following the action, authentic themes emerged: friendship, belonging, survival. These themes are human universals: behaviors that we all share and that connect us. We believe that character-driven stories humanize issues of global importance, moving audiences through the power of this universal connection.
Our observational approach is guided by our backgrounds in ethnographic filmmaking and our commitment to cross-cultural understanding. As outsiders to this community, we endeavored to understand the complexity of this human rights issue from a culturally relative point of view and to reflect that in the film by prioritizing our participants’ lived experiences. It was not our intention to villainize anyone, but rather to reveal the circumstances that create an environment in which children are exploited. At the same time, it was important for us to show the hope and solutions that survivors and social workers are enacting through their rescue and rehabilitation work.
We worked as a small three person team, embedded in the community, and immersed in our participants’ daily lives. Collaboration, reciprocity, and trust lay at the heart of our process. Our local associate producer, John Degraft Sam, was a key part of this intimate team. He grew up in the community where the rescue team is based and, in addition to translating for us, he helped us understand the culture and connect to the participants in our film. This allowed us to build strong relationships with our participants and create a film grounded in respect and understanding. By taking this approach, we witnessed a moving story of friendship, courage, and belonging that rises above the trope of victimhood, and shows us what it truly means to love and survive.
THE RESCUE LIST had its national broadcast debut on the PBS documentary series POV on March 23, 2020. It aired on ARTE in France and Germany, and in many other countries internationally. It won the Emmy® Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary on September 29th, 2021. We have also launched an extensive outreach campaign for education and awareness in the USA, including lesson plans developed in partnership with PBS, to bring the film into middle and highschool classrooms. In Ghana, the film is being screened in communities targeted by traffickers. Each screening enables the rescue team to add more names to their rescue list.
• Alyssa Fedele & Zachary Fink, Co-Directors, The Rescue List