Joy

Sudabeh Mortezai's 2019 Austrian film follows Joy, a Nigerian sex worker in Vienna, as she nears the end of paying off her debt. Having come through the same route herself, Joy is assigned to coach a reluctant newcomer while weighing faster ways out. The film leaves the rescuer figure familiar from trafficking narratives entirely outside: here the woman who supervises the victim and the woman who collects the debt have both walked the same road. Mortezai worked with non-professional actors and chose a recording style close to documentary. The hardest question the film asks is Joy's complicity in another woman's exploitation for the sake of her own survival, framed not as moral accusation but as a demonstration of how the system reproduces itself. The workings of the European asylum system are part of the story too. Who it's for: viewers interested in realist cinema about the reality of migration and trafficking in Europe. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding content about sex work and forced labour, or wanting a story that ends in deliverance.