Los Angeles. The City of Angels. The City of Dreams …
That is, unless you’re a teenager trafficked there by a foreign drug cartel then forced to work in an underground sweatshop in L.A.’s textile district.
That’s what happened to Jesús. He—and dozens of others like him—was lured in by a fancy brochure advertising a soccer camp. A smooth-talking, well-dressed impresario promised the camp would turn Jesús into a famous, professional athlete. And considering what’d they’d heard about America, and about the American dream, it was only natural for Jesús to want a better life for himself.
But it was all a lie.
Sure, Jesús didn’t have a lot in his small village. He and his friends played soccer in a dirt field. There were no roads or signs leading to his house, just a well-trodden path and some landmarks. But at least he was free.
Now, he has no control over any aspect of his life. He sleeps when he’s told to sleep. He eats when he’s told to eat. And he sews whatever his masters tell him to sew in the sweatshop that now serves as his home.
More than 12 million children are victims of modern slavery, City of Dreams tells us. “This is the story of one who fought back.”
One of the girls in the sweatshop is kind to Jesús, putting a salve on his back after he’s physically punished.
[Spoiler warning] Two police officers, Stevens and Rusanovschi manage to save Jesús and the rest of the sweatshop kids from slavery. Stevens nearly loses his job in the process by breaking rules, even getting suspended. But Rusanovschi listens to her partner’s gut feeling and follows up, eventually arresting several guilty parties and rescuing the children.
Before he leaves for L.A., Jesús’ father repeats a prayer that his mother used to say: “Our powerful and grateful Lord, You can do everything. Protect this child. Guide him to his destiny.” This prayer is repeated throughout the film and seems to offer Jesús some small comfort.
Jesús’ mother’s last words, we’re told, were that sometimes God listens and sometimes He doesn’t. Jesús also indicates that he believes his mother is in heaven. However, there are clearly some contrasting beliefs in play here as well.
Jesús’ parents went to see a shaman when his mother gave birth to him, though this was likely because shamans serve as “medicine men” in poor villages such as theirs. The shaman wears a feathered animal skull mask. And he chants the aforementioned prayer as he performs an almost ritualistic C-section on Jesús’ mother.
A teenage girl in the sweatshop wears a cross necklace. When asked about her faith, the girl says Christ taught her to love her neighbor and her enemies. The woman she’s talking to (whom we later learn is a female pimp) scoffs at this, telling the girl that God cannot teach her about love and that she should have loved herself first.
A cross marks a woman’s grave. Someone says “the devil must be dancing” on a hot day. There’s another, much cruder, reference to the devil. A cross hangs on the rear-view mirror of a man’s car. After passing a sobriety test, the same guy says he’s “ready for church.”
A teen has two tattoos of crosses. A few children cross themselves in prayer before eating. There’s a figurine of Mary in someone’s room.
A grown man, who acts effeminately, calls a teenage boy “cute” and tries to grab the teen’s groin, making a crude reference to the boy’s genitals. The teen slaps his hand away. Later, the same man tells a teen girl that in America, “boys play with boys, and girls play with girls.” Then he says he likes to play with both.
Jesús mistakenly sews his first dress with holes in the breasts. Another boy asks him if that’s how he “gets off.” One of the older teens in the sweatshop, who has his own room because of his managerial position, has pictures of bikini-clad women taped to his wall.
Some of the teen girls at the sweatshop wear cleavage-baring shirts or dresses, the only clothes available to them. We see teen boys and men shirtless on occasion to combat the heat of the sweatshop. We hear crude references to both the male and female anatomy, as well as sex.
A sex worker tells her pimp about her client, stating that sometimes the man doesn’t want to have sex, he just wants to cry.
In the sweatshop, Jesús is befriended by Elena, another teen slave. The two become close, playing footsie while working and eventually sharing a kiss.
This film aims to shine a light on modern slavery—on children who are forced to live and work in inhumane sweatshops right here in the United States. But in pulling back that curtain—and by depicting realistic portraits of what these children experience—filmmakers expose audiences to disturbing content, most of which is child abuse.
First, there’s neglect: The sweatshop where Jesús and the other children live and work is located in the basement of a derelict house. The windows are boarded up. The doors are locked. Wandering upstairs for any reason is considered a punishable offence. So the kids never see sunshine or breathe fresh air.
Then there’s the “sweat” aspect of the sweatshop. It’s hot in that basement. So Jesús and the others are perpetually covered in a thick layer of sweat. Worse still, they aren’t allowed the dignity of bathing, brushing their teeth or washing their clothes.
The teens all share one bathroom too, which they line up for during strictly regulated breaks. The food they’re served looks neither fresh nor nutritious.
Sleeping conditions are poorer still. There is one room dedicated for sleeping; the floor is concrete; there are no pillows or mattresses; and the kids are packed in like sardines. And they only get six hours of sleep each night.
When the kids aren’t sleeping, eating or using the bathroom, they’re working. Not that they get paid. Oh no, these children are slaves. They work no matter what—through illness, injury, presumably ‘til they’re old enough to serve their masters in other ways or until they die from exhaustion or worse.
And what might be worse? Well, that’s where the physical abuse comes in. Early on, we see several other sweatshop teens with scars and welts on their backs. After Jesús gets on the wrong side of El Jefe (“the Boss”), we see exactly how those scars and welts were inflicted. Not at the hands of El Jefe, mind you, but by the hands of Cesar, an older teen who acts as the sweatshop’s “manager.”
Cesar carries out his tasks with disturbing fervor, although there’s no doubt that El Jefe condones (if not orders) these “punishments.” El Jefe tells Jesús that his wife used to beat their son until she could fill a glass vial with his blood, claiming it removed “weakness” from the body. And he says she was right for doing so.
Later, when Jesús attempts to run away, he’s beaten, stripped bare and locked in a cellar just big enough for him to hold his knees to his chest. He’s kept there several days.
The “work” environment certainly doesn’t promote camaraderie—after all, if the kids get too friendly, they might band together and revolt. Which is why another teenager cruelly burns Jesús with a clothing iron after Jesús messes up the group’s quota for the day. Another slave smacks the younger boy across the face.
That all said, adults do occasionally get their hands dirty, slapping the kids around frequently. And in the film’s climax, El Jefe beats Jesús half to death with a leather belt, cutting him and causing one of the boy’s eyes to swell shut. He then threatens to kill Jesús with a pair of scissors.
[Spoiler warning] El Jefe is prevented from killing Jesús by the timely arrival of a police officer. He uses Jesús as a human shield, threatening to stab the boy. Other officers arrive, all pointing their guns at the man. Luckily, no shots are fired.
Sadly, that isn’t the extent of the abuse either. It’s strongly suggested that some teens “escape” slavery in the sweatshop by agreeing to become child prostitutes instead. Allegedly, they won’t be physically harmed if they do so—or at least that’s what the female pimp promises them. So many of the teens, both boys and girls, see this as a better option. Two girls reluctantly choose this path. And we later see a garbled video of the girls forced to engage sexually with adults, at least one of them begging for it to stop.
It seems that adults sex workers are also forced into their jobs, with one woman threatened by her pimp over the phone.
At one point, Jesús is chased on foot by half a dozen adults as he tries to escape the sweatshop. People get knocked about during this scene, and the chase only ends when Jesús is accidentally hit by a car. (Though he’s patched up.)
We learn that many of the adults perpetrating these crimes against children were once victims of abuse themselves. And we see how teens are groomed for this life in Cesar, the teenage manager who doles out the beatings on his fellow slaves.
Unfortunately, a police officer (Officer Stevens) fails to save Jesús a couple of times because of his heated actions. When Cesar mouths off to him, Stevens punches the teen, damaging some of Cesar’s teeth, and the officer pulls a gun on him. He claims Cesar came at him with a screwdriver, but he’s reprimanded by superior officers, who restrict his access to the house.
Just before he comes to L.A., Jesús learns his mother died while giving birth to him because she refused to end the pregnancy as their local shaman suggested. Jesús seems to feel guilty about this.
Throughout the film, usually when he’s being physically assaulted, Jesús pictures his mother’s sufferings. In these scenes, the shaman uses a sharpened rock as a knife to perform a C-section. Jesús’ mother foams at the mouth, bleeding heavily from her womb and succumbing to death.
Jesús clearly still sees the shaman as a villain, substituting the man in his mind’s eye for Cesar, El Jefe and other people who threaten him.
A police officer slams a man (whom the audience knows is guilty) onto the hood of his car, handcuffing him without evidence. He tells his boss he suspects the man is in possession of child pornography (because he is), but the officer is ordered to let the man go.
Before he comes to L.A., Jesús is slide-tackled while playing soccer. The perpetrator then grabs him by the hair and threatens to castrate him, referencing a previous incident in which he kicked Jesús in the groin.
Rodrigo, the man who smuggles Jesús into the U.S., drugs the boy to make him fall asleep as they cross the border.
City of Dreams has a mix of English and Spanish profanities (all subtitled). Combined, there are more than 30 uses of the f-word and 10 uses of the s-word, as well as several uses each of “a–,” “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “d–mit,” “d–k” and “h—.” God’s name is abused three times, twice paired with “d–mit,” and Christ’s name is abused once.
A teenage boy smokes cigarettes. A police officer tells her partner a story about drug lords.
It’s a complicated web of crime that brings Jesús to L.A. First Rodrigo lies to Jesús’ dad that he’ll give Jesús a better life in America. Then, he smuggles the boy across the U.S. border using a fake passport provided by a drug cartel. He takes Jesús to the sweatshop where El Jefe pays Rodrigo (and thus, the cartel) and takes custody of the boy. Then El Jefe uses Jesús for free labor, forcing him to sew garments for a large fashion label. The label executives are, of course, completely aware of all these illegal proceedings but keep the police off their trail by donating large amounts of money to charities and using shell corporations to hide their tracks.
After this successful gambit, Rodrigo laughs at Jesús, mocking how the child will be forced into labor. He mentions that he himself was forced to clean vomit off a pier when he was a child slave.
An older teen is devastated when he learns that meeting his quota in the sweatshop isn’t enough to be set free. Cesar similarly sobs when he fails to get into college, his one hope of escaping slavery (because despite his violent actions and limited freedom, he too is a victim here).
Many lies are told. We hear a couple of racial slurs. Child slaves sometimes throw each other under the bus to avoid punishment. One of the sweatshop’s higher ups has a son of his own, who uses a car horn to alert adults to Jesús’ escape.
We see a teen urinating. Jesús is covered in his own spit/vomit after a particularly brutal beating.
Elena says she never met her father, because he left before she was born. Apparently, her mom told her that if Elena made a name for herself, he would come back. And the teen girl works hopelessly to that end.
Police officers are rightly frustrated by legal proceedings that prevent them from catching the bad guys. El Jefe tearfully tells officers how he became a pawn in human trafficking, citing racial discrimination.
City of Dreams has a very clear goal: to raise awareness about children who are sold into slavery.
As Ari López (who plays Jesús) tell us at the end of the film, it’s easy to think of this problem as one that only occurs in other countries. Unfortunately, it happens right here in America, too, right under our noses. And López urges us all to be mindful of where we buy our clothes and food—to be sure that we aren’t furthering the problem with mindless consumption.
This is certainly a just and important cause. Nevertheless, it will be difficult for most audiences to watch Jesús’ story on screen.
City of Dreams is riddled with realistic but horrific depictions of violence against children. There are hints of child prostitution. And as the story’s intensity amps up, so does its profanity.
City of Dreams hails from the same executive producers as Sound of Freedom, and many Christians will see this film as a clarion call to help end child slavery. That said, I would urge any audiences who want to see this film to exercise a huge note of caution before taking your family along with you.
Even if the violence and language weren’t so extreme, the themes of this film are heavy topics, especially when you consider how young the characters are. Jesús is anywhere from 12 to 15 years old when he becomes a slave. And most other children in the sweatshop are of a similar age.
It would behoove parents to take this film’s appropriate R-rating very seriously. Because even if your own teens are mature enough to handle this content, the film isn’t made to entertain. It’s meant to inform. And the creators want everyone who watches it to be distressed enough to take action—which isn’t necessarily something that younger or immature kids are equipped to handle just yet.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family, that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!
