We present “A smile in the backpack”, a documentary series about human trafficking

The actress Ana Duato and her daughter María Bernardeau star in this series of short documentaries whose trailer premiered yesterday, September 26, in an event that included the collaboration of the Indian restaurant Benares, in Madrid.

Coinciding with the International Day against Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation, on September 23, the NGO Mumbai Smiles has presented “A smile in the backpack”, an audiovisual project that reflects the trip that Ana Duato and her daughter took. María Bernardeau last April in India. The series of five documentaries in vlog format, which can be seen soon on the Mumbai Smiles YouTube channel, captures the reality of human trafficking in a context that the foundation knows deeply after almost 18 years of work in this area. . The pieces collect the causes, consequences, and testimonies of the victims and survivors of this modern slavery that more than 27 million people suffer around the world and that fundamentally affects women, girls and boys.

The actress Ana Duato, committed to Mumbai Smiles for several years, and her daughter María Bernardeau, were the promoters of the project and proposed it to the foundation. “We started talking to Jaume Sanllorente, founder and director of the NGO, more than a year ago to be able to travel and see the Mumbai Smiles projects in person, but there were still COVID restrictions and it was not possible to travel until this year” , declares Ana Duato. “Our main objective was to transmit through our voice and our eyes what is happening in this part of the world, especially with a problem as serious as human trafficking, which mothers and daughters suffer, such as my mother and I could be, if we were born in another circumstances” adds María Bernardeau.

The personal and social experience of Ana Duato and María Bernardeau that this trip has entailed also reflects how Mumbai Smiles works to prevent, rescue and rehabilitate survivors and their sons and daughters. During the trip, Duato and Bernardeau recorded all the material from their mobile phones or compact video cameras, seeking to use a current, dynamic format in line with the audiovisual language of the young audience. For María Bernardeau “’A smile in the backpack’ has been a hard but wonderful experience in which we have met brave, inspiring women and in which my mother and I have felt very identified, very close, although thousands of kilometers separate us.”

The Film Academy hosted the private screening of the trailer and two episodes of “A Smile in the Backpack”, and the Indian restaurant Benarés, which collaborates with Mumbai Smiles in one of its preschool education projects for the prevention of trafficking, hosted the subsequent reception for the guests. For its part, Grupo Ganga has also collaborated in the editing and production of these documentaries.

At the premiere, Jaume Sanllorente, founder and director of Mumbai Smiles, mentioned that this year marks the 110th anniversary of the promulgation of the first law against child prostitution, which took place on September 23, 1913 in Argentina, a reason that it serves to annually commemorate the International Day against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation. Sanllorente also presented the new Mumbai Smiles awareness campaign, #breakwithtrafficking, whose launch coincided with the premiere of these documentaries. “It is a campaign focused on boys and girls who suffer human trafficking, either because their mothers are already being exploited, or because they themselves are victims of this slavery,” declared Sanllorente.

He put the finishing touch to the day with cocktails at the Benarés restaurant, where collaborators and friends of the Foundation such as Irene Villa, Lydia Bosch and Alejandra Martos wanted to accompany us. The conversation flowed while Alex Gómez Parra created a special mural live for the occasion. Here you can see some photos of the event taken by Laura Galván.