Hope LostMovies like Hope Lost
- Key Features:
- Human trafficking, Exploitation, Loss of innocence, Crime, Survival, Desperation, European cinema
- Tone:
- serious, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Drama viewers, Viewers interested in social issues, Fans of international cinema
- Emotional Arc:
- ['Hope → Despair']
Hope Lost

A Romanian girl dreams of living the glamorous life she sees in Italian soap operas.
Hope Lost
To support her family, Maria works as a trafficker of surrogate mothers, transporting them from place to place along a river — but when one disappears, Maria is left with the task of finding her and must enter deeper into a world she wishes to escape.

Girl Lost tackles the issue of underage prostitution as told through the eyes of a wayward teen. Groomed by her own mother to work in the underbelly of Los Angeles, the young girl struggles to survive in this dark world.

A Texas cop, whose own daughter might have been forced into sexual slavery, joins forces with a Mexican youth to find the boy's sister, who was abducted and forced into prostitution. Meanwhile, a Polish woman who was promised a better life in America also becomes a victim.

A young Romanian woman and a recovering drug addict launch an unlikely investigation after her parents are murdered by a vicious serial killer known as The Headhunter.

In a struggling post-Soviet community, Lilya a teenage girl is abandoned when her mother moves to the United States with her boyfriend. Facing neglect and poverty, she meets Andrei, who offers her a job in Sweden, giving her hope for a better life — and a journey that will change everything.

Her mother in Kenya, 13-year-old Melanie spends her summer vacation at a strict diet camp set in the Austrian countryside. Between workouts and nutrition classes, pillow fights and first cigarettes, she falls in love with a doctor 40 years her senior.

In this story inspired by real characters, three girls from America, Nigeria and India are trafficked through an elaborate global network and enslaved in a Texas brothel, and must together attempt a daring escape to reclaim their freedom.

Interweaving stories of four different women involved in the sex industry offers a glimpse into the dark underbelly of Los Angeles and the taboo lifestyle of a sex worker. A teen runaway, single mother and two career escorts interconnect through their own personal journeys filled with loss, betrayal and the struggle to survive. Written by anonymous

Fresh out of prison, a former debt collector working for a gangland boss is told he has a terminal brain tumour. In an attempt to atone for his past he rescues a young girl from trafficking, forcing him into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with his boss.

After 8-year-old So-won narrowly survives a brutal sexual assault, her family labors to help her heal while coping with their own rage and grief.

After losing her parents, young flower selling Midori is put up by a fairground group. She is abused and forced to slavery, until the arrival of an enigmatic magician of short stature, who gives her hope for a better future.

For Pablo Escobar family is everything. When young surfer Nick falls for Escobar's niece, Maria, he finds his life on the line when he's pulled into the dangerous world of the family business.

Rome, 1957. A woman, Cabiria, is robbed and left to drown by her boyfriend, Giorgio. Rescued, she resumes her life and tries her best to find happiness in a cynical world. Even when she thinks her struggles are over and she has found happiness and contentment, things may not be what they seem.

Longing for a brighter future, two Senegalese teenagers embark on a journey from West Africa to Italy. However, between their dreams and reality lies a labyrinth of checkpoints, the Sahara Desert, and the vast waters of the Mediterranean.

Somewhere in Eastern Europe. Carole is a young nurse with a humanitarian aid group that has reached the end of its mission. But just then, the young woman and her two colleagues are kidnapped by strangers for mysterious reasons. Held captive, cared for and kept alive in an oppressive and sinister setting, the three prisoners soon discover with horror what their kidnappers truly have in store for them.

Lia and Tina are two beautiful girls who meet and realize that they have a lot in common. They are both young, beautiful and pissed off, so they decide to hitchhike their way to Rome to find Nazariota's commune, a place to stay for free and have all the sex they want... or so they think. Things don't go as they have planned though, and soon they become involved in prostitution, the police and an aggressive gang.

To help her financially struggling mother, a teenage girl turns to escorting and meets a wealthy man who makes a proposal she can't refuse.

Eric Lazard is a heartbroken former college football star who gets involved in a dangerous Florentine sport and a local woman, Stephanie, while visiting his cousin Anna, who lives in Italy and teaches the Italian language to foreigners.

The story of a small, simple and happy family in which a boy, a manipulator, violently enters, which distorts the life of this wonderful fifteen-year-old and makes her a nightmare.

A young actress rehearsing for a play about human trafficking begins to relive terrifying scenes that may be dreams -- or an alternate reality.

The story of a young woman clinging on to her dream to become a beauty contest queen in a Mexico dominated by organized crime.

To bring down a global human trafficking ring, an Interpol agent recruits the help of a brutal criminal with inside knowledge of the yakuza.

The increasingly politicised Emanuelle gets deeper into fighting an international trade composed of sex, violence and high profile players.

Aleksandra is a student from Krško, a small town in Slovenia. She has a plan to conquer the world. Working as a prostitute, her life is heading to where she wants it, but an accidental death has her wrestling with new feelings of fear, loneliness, confusion and responsibility

A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.

Ana and her two best friends, Maria and Paula, navigate life in their oppressive countryside village. Whilst their families struggle in the poppy fields harvesting opium, the girls try to grow alongside the creeping terror of their cartel oppressors.

Emanuelle is framed by a corrupt D.A. while investigating a drug smuggling operation and has to tough it out under lock and key, dealing with a strict warden and abusive guards.

Promiscuous teenager Chiara gets herself and her equally debauched peers embroiled in a drug ring run by a dirty cop.

Ayiva recently left his home in Burkina Faso in search of a way to provide for his sister and his daughter. He takes advantage of his position in an illegal smuggling operation to get himself and his best friend Abas off of the continent. Ayiva adapts to life in Italy, but when tensions with the local community rise, things become increasingly dangerous. Determined to make his new situation work he attempts to weather the storm, but it has its costs.

Giulia’s is a poised world, made of rigour and sacred texts, which fiercely excludes those who do not belong to it. Libero's world is the world of all the others, of those who make mistakes, who fend for themselves looking for another chance and who love unconditionally. When Giulia meets Libero, she realizes she can have another destiny, one she will have to choose and build.

Massimo Sisti is a reputable professional with a nice house, a happy marriage, and two loving daughters, whose life is turned upside down when one day he finds a little girl tied up in his basement.

Two lovers are stuck in stale relationships due to lean finances. But when one is duped into thinking he's suddenly rich, he takes very drastic action.

After disappearing from a small Polish town, a mother discovers her 4-year old daughter, Ola, has been abducted by the Russian Mafia. In pursuit of her daughter, she is stopped for speeding by a police officer, Robert Goc. His intervention results in the escape of the kidnappers across the Eastern border. Feeling guilt for failing to prevent the abduction, Robert becomes engaged in an international investigation to find the missing girl.

Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.

A veteran call girl and a runaway prostitute witness a murder which sends them on an out-of-control roller coaster ride through the twilight zone of sex-for-sale.

When Mari Gilbert's daughter disappears, police inaction drives her own investigation into the gated Long Island community where Shannan was last seen. Her search brings attention to over a dozen murdered prostitutes.

After a night out with friends, Hyun Jae accepts a late night ride home from a young fire fighter. What begins as a night of promise quickly turns into a nightmare when she is abducted and imprisoned outside Las Vegas as a sex slave.

Alina returns to Romania from Germany, hoping to bring Voichita—the only person in the world she loves and was loved by—back with her. But Voichita has found God, and God is the hardest lover of all to best.

A cop named Cristi must go undercover to trail teen Victor who is suspected of selling pot in the north-eastern city of Vaslui.

An impoverished teen seeking to escape the clutches of a human trafficker must weigh living up to his moral code against his struggle to survive.

Female prisoners endure the horrors of drug abuse, prostitution and rampant sadism at an island prison. When an escape attempt goes awry, the fugitives discover that escaping can be as dangerous as remaining in the prison.

Young and in prison for theft, Daphne falls in love with Josh, another inmate. Their love story exists through secret letters and fleeting conversations.

When a little girl is kidnapped by a trafficking ring, they soon find they messed with the wrong child. Her mother, a notorious former gang leader, is close on their trail and will go to any lengths to bring her child home.

James, down on his luck and desperate for some quick cash, agrees to drive a small truck across country. He soon realizes that he's made a huge mistake and has inadvertently become involved in a dangerous human trafficking ring. The unlikely hero risks it all to shut down the trafficking ring and save the woman he is falling in love with.

In the Mexican-Guatemalan border, young teenage lovers, Sabina and Jovany, both Hondurans, accidentally meet again after some years without seeing each other. She plans to get to the United States and dreams about being a great singer; he commits all the required atrocities to be accepted by the gang: la Mara Salvatrucha. Sabina and Jovany crashed with the most adverse conditions at the border like white slavery, the Mexican and American migratory agents Burrona and Patrick, the brothel matron Doña Lita, Don Nico the Mexican Consul in Tecún Umán, the drug trafficking networks, the army and la Mara Salvatrucha.

After his daughter is assaulted and left with an injury that may jeopardize her opportunity to study in the UK, a Romanian doctor decides to do whatever it takes to secure her future.

Retired porn star Milos leads a normal family life trying to make ends meet. Presented with the opportunity of a lifetime to financially support his family for the rest of their lives, Milos must participate in one last mysterious film. From then on, Milos is drawn into a maelstrom of unbelievable cruelty and mayhem.

A female FBI agent holidaying in Eastern Europe with her family gets her life upside down when her daughter is kidnapped. She has to team up with a criminal on the run to save her daughter before time runs out.

Sofia, 14 years old, is in love with Ulises. Because of him, in spite of him, she is forced into a prostitution network in Mexico. To set her free, Ulises will have to find another girl to replace her. Adapted from Jorge Volpi’s novel, set in the world of juvenile prostitution.

When João goes to Brazil in search of a better life, he meets punk music enthusiast Maria and falls in love with her. But his involvement in the local drug trade makes him the target of a vicious drug lord.

A retired contract killer goes on a bloody rampage when a young girl finds herself at the mercy of gangland human traffickers and only one man can come to her rescue, with an arsenal of weapons and years of experience in the art of killing.

A Mumbai police officer's search for a missing teenage girl leads her to the depraved world of child trafficking. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game between the officer and a ruthless mafia kingpin.

Lis is a teenager whose dream is to become a circus artist and leave her hometown, even if she knows that to do it she’ll have to fight her side against her parents. It’s summer and she spends her days playing with her friends and flirting with her boyfriend, a few years older than herself. The lack of privacy and the neighbours’ gossip force Lis to keep their relationship secret so that her parents won’t find out. A relationship which change her live forever.

On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.

Set in early 19th century Wallachia, Romania, a policeman, Costandin, is hired by a nobleman to find a Gypsy slave who has run away from his estate after having an affair with his wife.

A psychotic small-time criminal realizes that the everyday robberies, rapes and murders he commits aren't profitable enough, so he figures to hit the big time by kidnapping the daughter of a rich man.

Leftist radical-turned-terrorist Giorgio—hiding in Latin America since the '70s—turns himself in after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Wishing to lead a comfortable, bourgeois life in his native Italy, he cuts a deal with a dirty cop, getting his sentence reduced in return for ratting former comrades out. Once released, Giorgio obsessively pursues his dream of becoming an upright citizen, but his old police aquaintance keeps dragging him down...

A hardened mercenary in the Foreign Legion begins to find his own humanity when confronted with atrocities during the fighting in Bosnia.

A German student, Stefan, now finished with his studies, hitchhikes to Paris. There he meets a free-spirited American girl, Estelle, who he follows to Ibiza. The two begin a sad and dark path into heroin addiction.

A teen girl disappears after trying to meet men online in order to escape her small town. Apparently, only her best friend worries enough to investigate the mystery.

A young drug addict who has lost touch with her rich family hits rock bottom when she sells her new-born baby to child traffickers. She soon regrets her decision and finds the courage and strength to get him back. To do so, she must follow a trail into the woods and find an eerie house where the old lady she met, her albino servant and a girl with a strange gait, all live together. Nothing could have prepared her for the horror she is about to discover.

A young American falls hard for a Romanian cellist whose father has recently died -- and whose violent past could bring about his own demise.

Roman loves Camille as much as he loves his two daughters. But he is hiding from all of them a serious problem of addiction, which could endanger his dearest. Does love have a chance to survive when trust is broken?

35-year-old Alice has a husband and a son. Her life seems a beautiful dream, but it soon turns out to be a nightmare. Her husband dies in a car accident and her lawyer tells her that she is on her uppers. The only way she has to earn money in a short time is by resorting to the oldest job in history.

Jae-Young is an amateur prostitute who sleeps with men while her best friend Yeo-Jin "manages" her, fixing dates, taking care of the money, and making sure the coast is clear. When Jae-Young falls in love with one of those men, she suppresses her feelings towards him in respect of her friend who's jealous.

A conservative Midwest businessman ventures into the sordid underworld of pornography in search of his runaway teenage daughter who’s making hardcore films in the pits of Los Angeles.

A tragicomedy dramatizing how an innocent villager is driven into the crime world only to collect enough cash to make his biggest dream come true: Return to his village home and marry the girl next door.

A summer fling born under the Sicilian sun quickly develops into a heartbreaking love story that forces a boy and girl to grow up too quickly.

The clues to a young woman's death come together as the lives of seemingly unrelated women begin to intersect.

Without a family, penniless and separated from her sister, a beautiful chaste woman will have to cope with an endless parade of villains, perverts and degenerates who will claim not only her treasured virtue but also her life.

The story of August who loses his beloved sister Christina, a former porn star known as The Princess. He adopts Christina's five-year-old daughter Mia. Weighed down by grief and guilt, August breaks down and with Mia in tow, he embarks on a mission of vengeance to erase Christina's pornographic legacy.

After a queen's tragic death, the king abandons his newborn daughter in a cave, but a witch saves her. Years later, the tomboy princess must confront and ultimately falls in love with the enemy king.

Melissa is an experienced, exemplary prison guard. But a dangerous spiral is set into motion when she transfers to a Corsican jail, where she accepts help and protection from inmate Saveriu to get her bearings. Upon his release, he contacts Melissa expecting to collect.

After being sent to a youth detention centre, 18-year-old Andrej has to fight for his place within the group of inmates while getting closer to Željko, their informal leader, and struggling to keep his repressed secret in the dark.

A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man's obsession.

Marino Pacileo has a soft spot for gambling. When he discovers that Lila's father, the young Chinese girl that he is in love with cannot pay a debt, the gambler steals money from the jail he is in to help the love of his life.

Mimma starts working in Madame Colette’s brothel to help her boyfriend financially. There she is rechristened “Paprika,” and falls in love with her first client, naval officer Franco. Despite this attraction, she begins her climb through the sex trade, residing in Italy’s most illustrious brothels.

On the Spanish island of Ibiza, porn filmmaker Sandro and Angelino, the manager of a beachside watering hole, find their very different lives overlapping. Meanwhile, the island police chief, who is currently at odds with his rebellious son Jorge, is investigating the death of a drug dealer (which was accidentally brought on by Angelino). Jorge's plans to move to America have so far been thwarted by his father, but when he finds out about the affair his dad had been having with a male nightclub dancer, he uses it as blackmail fodder.

After moving to Bogotá for a chance at a better life, a young Korean man rises through the Colombian black market — risking peril for a shot at success.

Three hooded Eastern-European criminals burst into a home in a Madrid gated community, holding the family hostage in its own home, and forcing the father to empty his credit cards. But the family fights back - brutally.

A group of criminals kidnap a teenage ballet dancer, the daughter of a notorious gang leader, in order to obtain a ransom of $50 million, but over time, they discover that she is not just an ordinary girl. After the kidnappers begin to diminish, one by one, they discover, to their increasing horror, that they are locked inside with no normal little girl.

In the aftermath of a tragic fire in a Romanian club, burn victims begin dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life threatening. A team of investigative journalists move into action uncovering the mass corruption of the health system and of the state institutions. Collective follows journalists, whistle blowers, and authorities alike. An immersive and uncompromising look into a dysfunctional system, exposing corruption, propaganda, and manipulation that nowadays affect not only Romania, but societies around the world.

While investigating the global phenomenon of caste and its dark influence on society, a journalist faces unfathomable personal loss and uncovers the beauty of human resilience.

An abandoned child steals to survive and has problems when he decides to steal from the priest who helps him.

A small time delinquent, turned police mechanic for a go fast task force, is forced to defend his innocence when his mentor is killed by dirty cops.

A young Italian actress embarks on a self-destructive spree of sex, drugs and other excess while doing some soul searching to find the path for redemption.

In the near future, the southern Italian city of Taranto is surrounded by barbed wire that no one, not even the police, dares to cross. The poorest are left fighting for survival, while gangs compete for the territory. Two thirteen-year-old orphans who grew up together, dream of joining one of the gangs.

In a youth correctional facility, Joe is preparing his return to society. But William’s arrival turns his desire for freedom into desire of another kind. Behind fences and cell walls, passions begin to play havoc with the need for liberty.

Irena, a Ukrainian woman, comes to Italy looking for a job as a maid. She does everything she can to become a beloved nanny for an adorable little girl, Thea. However, that is just the very beginning of her unknown journey.

Giulia and Carlo have been happy together for three years, but Giulia's announcement that she is pregnant sends him into a secret panic. Terrified at his imminent entry into the adult world of irreversible responsibilities, Carlo finds himself tempted by a bewitching 18-year-old girl, Francesca, whom he meets by chance at a wedding. The possibility of one last youthful crazy fling before the impending prison of parenthood proves to be too attractive to resist.

Marked by losses and mismatches, José's eccentric family seek to be happy while locked in Paraíso Perdido, a nightclub that has stopped in time, where they sing popular romantic music.

After his family is killed by a Serbian gangster with international interests. NYC detective Nick goes to S.E. Asia and teams up with a Thai detective to get revenge and destroy the syndicates human trafficking network.

Elena and Antonio seem not to be made for each other. They are too different in terms of character, life choices, worldview, and the way they relate to others. They are total opposites. However, they are overwhelmed by a mutual attraction they're trying hard to avoid; but to which they succumb to.

Diana, a high-class prostitute trying to escape from a serial killer, suffers a car accident that leaves her blind and kills the family of Chin, a ten-year-old boy.

A couple off for a romantic weekend in the mountains are accosted by a biker gang. Alone in the mountains, Brea and John must defend themselves against the gang, who will stop at nothing to protect their secrets.

A 13 years old girl is forced to go living with another family for reasons unknown.

The father of a terminally ill girl is determined to grant his daughter's last wish, a ridiculously expensive collectors' costume from a Japanese TV series. The request will drive him into a journey within his city's dark underbelly.

The destinies of two families are irrevocably tied together after a cyclist is hit off the road by a jeep in the night before Christmas Eve.

Amalia is an adolescent girl who is caught in the throes of her emerging sexuality and her deeply held passion for her Catholic faith. These two drives mingle when the visiting Dr. Jano takes advantage of a crowd to get inappropriately close to the girl. Repulsed by him but inspired by an inner burning, Amalia decides it is her God-given mission to save the doctor from his behavior, and she begins to stalk Dr. Jano, becoming a most unusual voyeur.
