PODCAST| Matt Micucci interviews Sudabeh Mortezai, director of the film Joy.
Sudabeh Mortezai presented her latest work, Joy, at the 75th Venice International Film Festival in the Giornate degli Autori strand. In this interview we talk about the film with her, her research on the topic and the discoveries she made, the way she privileged and encouraged improvisation and her views on the general situation that she examines in her film.
Joy is a young Nigerian woman caught in the vicious cycle of sex trafficking. She works the streets to pay off debts to her exploiter Madame, while supporting her family in Nigeria and hoping for a better life for her little daughter in Vienna. Joy struggles to understand her role in this merciless system of exploitation when she is instructed by Madame to supervise Precious, a teenage girl fresh from Nigeria who is not ready to accept her fate.