Fatal Promises (2009)

Directed by Kat Rohrer and featuring appearances by actress Emma Thompson, this film uses direct testimony from activists and survivors to explore the problem of human trafficking. It is one of the few such documentaries to focus both on sex trafficking and on other forms of forced labor, and has been screened at numerous college campuses. Visit the film’s website for more details.

Journey to Freedom (2012)

Produced by Fair Trade Pictures and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center with a grant from the Department of State, this brief film tells the stories of Solomon Northup, the famous nineteenth-century American slave, and Vannak Prum, a Cambodian laborer enslaved in the twenty-first century. It uses the parallels and differences between the two men’s lives to reveal “startling similarities” between slavery then and slavery now. Visit the Freedom Center’s website for more details.

The Dark Side of Chocolate (2010)

This documentary film explores the use of child labor and trafficked children in the Ivory Coast to produce cocoa for the global chocolate industry. Visit the film’s website for more details.

The Abolitionists (2013)

HAS Board members James Brewer Stewart and Caleb McDaniel appear on screen in this collective bio-pic about Angelina Grimke, William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. It aired in 2013 on American Experience on PBS. See the film’s website for more details.