Hong Kong audiences this weekend are being introduced to the grim realities of the sex-slave trade in which their city has been accused of playing a part.
It comes in an unnerving documentary - Nefarious: Merchant of Souls - that offers a glimpse into how organised crime, abuse, greed, lust and humiliation intertwine to make human trafficking possible.
At the same time, a director of the US-based anti-trafficking organisation Exodus Cry - which produced the documentary - is visiting the city to drive home the message by speaking to schools and business people.
'Human trafficking almost sounds like it is just moving people across borders, but it's really modern-day slavery,' the group's director of awareness and prevention, Laila Mickelwait, told a businesswomen's luncheon yesterday. 'It is the exploitation of a person's vulnerabilities.'
The United Nations said this month that 2.4 million people are victims of human trafficking at any one time, and 80 per cent are exploited as sex slaves.
And in 2007, the US State Department marked Hong Kong as a transit point and destination for people trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labour, although the government received a top rating for enforcement of anti-trafficking laws.
Mickelwait is seeking to persuade legislators all over the world to criminalise the purchase of sex - a measure first implemented in Sweden 10 years ago - instead of prosecuting prostitutes, which she says would stamp out the demand for sex and drive out organised crime.