“A daring, novelistic and unforgettable account of the real lives of female prostitutes in three very different countries and social contexts… A wrenching journalistic exploration… and something close to great cinema.” — Salon.com
A look not just at prostitution, but the relationships between men and women in contemporary society that yields telling and ambivalent insights.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2012
Whores’ Glory 2011
Invoking a triptych of Heaven, Earth and Hell, the startling, altogether unhackneyed Whores’ Glory introduces us to female sex workers, their clients and their managers in three markedly different cultures. Austrian documentarian and fiction filmmaker Michael Glawogger (Workingman’s Death, NZIFF06) claims to have paid every one of his interview subjects for their time. Though the scope of his vision is global and his style favours heightened realism, Glawogger’s film is keenly attentive to each environment, bristles with the individuality of his subjects and successfully thwarts glib socio-political analysis. — BG
“Tactfully shattering received wisdoms, this colourfully shot and casually explicit film begins in Thailand, moves to Bangladesh, then ends in Mexico, and it doesn’t merely chronicle the transactional formalities of buying and selling sex but, by zeroing in on a specific brothel or street in each location, it speaks volumes about wider cultural attitudes to sex, relationships, money and personal ambition.” — David Jenkins, Time Out