V SÍTI / CAUGHT IN THE NET

V SÍTI / CAUGHT IN THE NET

V SÍTI / CAUGHT IN THE NET

Directors: Barbora Chalupová & Vít Klusák
Documentary | CZ | 2020
100 min | Dolby 5.1

54th Hof International Film Festival
2020

It’s just one click: In the digital media, kids are under massive threat of cyber grooming with grown-up men shamelessly exploiting the young people’s artlessness, ignorance or inexperience on the net. In powerful images, the film documents something that happens more or less all over the world and casts a light on the taboo topic of child abuse on the net.

Three actresses of age, three nurseries, ten days and 2,458 men with explicit intents. The actresses look like very young girls, purporting to be 12-year-olds, and chat from a studio in carefully styled “nurseries” with men of all ages who detected and contacted the “girls” online. Most of the men ask for sex on the screen and send explicit photos or links to porn sites. Some try to blackmail the girls.

The film captures the three young women’s drama from casting to first contact right up to encounters with the men. Six cameras document whatever happens. The shooting is monitored and supervised closely both in legal and in psychological terms. The perpetrators are persecuted with their own means, the hunters become hunted themselves.