
Shot on location in Cambodia, including many scenes in actual brothels in the notorious red light district of Phnom Penh, HOLLY is a captivating, touching and emotional experience. Patrick, an American card shark and dealer of stolen artifacts, has been 'comfortably numb' in Cambodia for years, when he encounters Holly, a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl, in the K11 red light village. The girl has been sold by her impoverished family and smuggled across the border to work as a pro... (Full plot summary below)
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Shot on location in Cambodia, including many scenes in actual brothels in the notorious red light district of Phnom Penh, HOLLY is a captivating, touching and emotional experience. Patrick, an American card shark and dealer of stolen artifacts, has been 'comfortably numb' in Cambodia for years, when he encounters Holly, a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl, in the K11 red light village. The girl has been sold by her impoverished family and smuggled across the border to work as a prostitute. Holly's virginity makes her a lucrative prize, and when she is sold to a child trafficker, Patrick embarks on a frantic search through both the beautiful and sordid faces of the country, in an attempt to bring her to safety. Harsh, yet poetic, this feature forms part of the 'K-11' Project, dedicated to raising awareness of the epidemic of child trafficking and the sex slavery trade through several film projects. The film's producers endured substantial hardships in order to be able to shoot in Cambodia and have also founded the RedLight Children Campaign, which is a worldwide grassroots initiative generating conscious concern and inspiring immediate action against child sexploitation.
Leave your thoughts about Holly.
| Village VoiceNick PinkertonThough the storytelling is haphazard, artistry often transcends mere good intentions. Director Guy Moshe scavenges color from the torn fringes of Phnom Penh, and the composer Tôn-Thât Tiêt provides a spare score, laying bleary sadness over the art-house muckracking. |
| Seattle TimesJeff ShannonDespite its best intentions, Holly never achieves the dramatic clarity it needs to put its human suffering into galvanizing perspective. |
| Hollywood ReporterStephen FarberAn unsparing look at child prostitution is a hard sell for audiences, but this movie is a memorable achievement, far superior to the recently released "Trade," another movie about sex trafficking. |
| Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam ArnoldThe filmmaker's vision is harrowingly ugly and profoundly upsetting every step of the way. |
| San Francisco ChronicleMichael SnyderUltimately, Holly might have been more effective as a documentary. |
| New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanHalf drama, half social tract, Guy Moshe's feature debut is meant to illustrate the horrors of child prostitution in Southeast Asia. The intentions, unfortunately, are more notable than the execution. |
| Groucho ReviewsPeter CanaveseMoshe and co-screenwriter Guy Jacobson use their white protagonist not cynically to exploit white guilt, but to excavate it and examine its possibilities and failings with an anthropological eye. |
| Boxoffice MagazineSusan GreenGritty and wrenching, Holly is fiction with the heart of an expose. |
| User ReviewGimena SAwesome. Sad, tragic, touching, complex. Just brilliant. |
| User ReviewJoseph MHolly is a VERY accurate and realistic portrayal of human trafficking. What makes the film so accurate is its open-ended not-happy-ending. It is very difficult to get girls out of sexual servitude, and there are millions enslaved all of the world today. This is REAL and we join with the oppressors of those we choose to ignore. Go to an organization and at least donate $10 to help those who are fighting trafficking. |