This fearless woman fights to maintain slavery at the shelter of your seafood: salt: NPR

ghost fleet is a captivating new documentary about modern day slaves in the fishing industry in Thailand. The film plunges into the sordid work practices of an industry that provides seafood to the US, Europe and Asia, but focusing on the compelling work of Patima Tungpuchayakul, a Bangkok-based abolitionist, who devoted his life to helping "lost" men go home.

She works with a former slave, Tun Lin, who was kidnapped at the age of 14 and forced to fish without pay for eleven years. Together, they visit remote islands in Southeast Asia, where captive men have been living for years. They never see their families until Tungpuchayakul and his team introduce themselves and release them.

The documentary was born from a piece by co-director Shannon Service and a NPR colleague in 2012, which story was followed by The New York Times, AP, the guardian, and others. But the film has an emotional power that is missing in the reports, captured in the features etched on the faces of men, in their tears, in the isolated tropical locations where the film unfolds and in the strength of the protagonist, Tungpuchayakul.

Shannon took advantage of her busy schedule for the screening of the film (which is currently screened in selected theaters in the US) to talk about the project.

How was the film born?

I have been in this story for seven years. I started with another journalist, Becky Palstrom, and together we spent six months studying slavery in the fishing industry in Thailand. We were looking for how dozens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people crossed the borders, went to controlled ports, went to sea and disappeared, and no one really talked about it. The story has crossed us in Southeast Asia.

While we were doing this reporting, it became clear that the basement of the fishing industry was a crazy and fascinating world. Each of the men we interviewed could have written a Hollywood film about him. These men left home with the best of intentions to support their families. they were convinced to go to Thailand, where they had just entered a bar and were drugged and waking up on board.

They live in the space of an 18-wheeled vehicle, saving each other's lives, keeping each other alive and living in unbelievable conditions. Some of them had never seen the ocean before, nor swam, and suddenly, they are on a boat for many years. If they see lands, they will grab something that floats, jump into the water to escape, land on an island, and sleep in trees to avoid snakes. Or they will get married in an aboriginal community, but their current family thinks they're dead. And they have no hope of going home. By doing the radio doc, it became clear to me that it had to be a movie. And fortunately, Jeffrey Waldron (co-director) and Greg Kwedar (co-producer) heard the show and made contact with me.

What has been the process of making this film over so many years?

You will shoot a little, raise money, shoot more, collect more money. Fortunately, there were oceanic groups that really saw what we saw: that slavery is the Achilles' heel of overfishing: these boats were going further and further away from the coast and needed of manpower. Traffickers of human beings then got down to work and started selling people. If you have to meet good labor standards, a decent wage and bring men back home to their families, you can not ship these boats around the world bypassing international and national laws to catch fish. A number of organizations and individuals working in the oceans sector, including the director of The Cove, co-producer and Vulcan Productions, have played an absolutely vital role. They understood that the film was talking about the intersection of the defense of food, human rights and the environment.

Was there opposition because your characters do not speak English – it's not the white environmentalists who are saving the world?

You are right, and the road has been long and difficult because of that. This is a woman of color who saves men – so she reverses the typical Hollywood narrative. In fact, we had plenty of opportunities to obtain full funding if we could "find a character to whom the public can identify." And it's the code of the white men and heterosexuals. Many Western groups have done a remarkable job on this issue, but they do not do the work that Patima and Tun Lin do – which is incredibly cinematic, frontline, incredibly humane and daring work. We've heard things like, "OK, we'll give you funding as soon as you find the Western hero who speaks English." And the message is that these problems are solved only by Western heroes, which is rarely the case. But we resisted. I am very proud of the movie for this and proud of our team, but it is certainly much more difficult.

So, what was the reception of the film?

This has been extremely strong in film festivals, playing mostly in sold-out theaters. People are very moved. There are many tears. It's a very emotional movie and people really get it with a lot of openness. We receive the same reception from the seafood industry. We have not made a nominative film in which we only report to one company because it is about the same. a systemic problem. If this company were to change, people would think that the problem was solved when it was not. So it's really an open door in the seafood circles in a reflexive rather than negative way.

And what is the status of slavery in the seafood industry? You show the dramatic work of Patima that frees these workers, but is slavery still the status quo?

It's more or less. It is extremely difficult to get reliable numbers because it is a black market. The Thai government says that all this is past, but this is contradicted by the fact that there are rescues all the time. The government is taking admirable steps in the right direction by putting more boots on the boats, but it is very late in pursuing captains or owners. And although Thailand is not alone – there are certainly incidents on boats going from South Korea to Scotland – Thailand is still leading the rankings in terms of the scale of this problem.

Samuel Fromartz is the editor-in-chief of the Food & Environment Reporting Network and the author of Organic Inc., and In search of the perfect bread.