An Open Secret

The documentary is about the sexual abuse of child actors in Hollywood. At its centre are five young men who entered the industry as children, were abused by managers and producers, and decided years later to speak. Amy J. Berg directs. She had previously taken on abuse in the Catholic church with Deliver Us from Evil and been nominated for an Oscar; this applies the same method to another institution. Its argument is structural. Rather than accounting for individual perpetrators, it shows how children in the industry were left unprotected: management contracts, parties held in private houses, parents kept outside, and people with criminal records continuing to work. What happened to the film is part of the record. It was finished in 2014 and could not find a distributor; the large platforms would not take it, and it circulated only through limited screenings and online. The producers read that as the industry's answer to the subject. One of the young men who speaks died in the years afterwards, a footnote showing how long the damage the film describes actually lasts. Who it is for: viewers interested in documentaries about institutional abuse and in how the industry works internally. Who it is not for: the content is child sexual abuse, directly, and the documentary struggles to support some of its claims with documentary evidence.