Lilet Never Happened

Lilet is a girl living on the streets of Manila. She is scraping by to stay alive. As a child living on the street she has nothing to fall back on. At some point she is pulled into child prostitution. The film states this plainly and does not linger on it. Lilet is a fighter. She has not given up dreaming either. She breaks the rules and thinks her wits are enough to handle the world. A Dutch social worker named Claire tries to pull her out of that life. Claire means well but does not grasp the size of the problem at the start. The relationship between the two of them is the centre of the film. Wanting to save someone and being able to are not the same thing. When her innocent dreams run out, Lilet has to face what is in front of her. The production started from a real case. What a child the director met in Manila years earlier told him is where the film began. Sandy Talag and Johanna ter Steege appear in the hundred and five minute film, a Dutch and Philippine co-production Jacco Groen finished in 2012.