Even When I Fall

What image comes into your head when you think about a cir­cus con­jure? A big tent. A Tightrope. Per­haps an ele­phant. It prob­a­bly isn’t child traf­fick­ing, unless you live in Nepal or India, where, accord­ing to this doc­u­men­tary, every year around 10,000 chil­dren are either sold to or abduct­ed by Indi­an cir­cus­es. Chil­dren are lured away from their des­per­ate­ly poor fam­i­lies with the promise of food or mon­ey. They endure beat­ings, rape, gru­elling per­for­mance sched­ules and abhor­rent liv­ing conditions.

In Even When I Fall, film­mak­ers Kate McLarnon and Sky Neal fol­low two women for six years, track­ing their lib­er­a­tion from one such cir­cus. Both have equal­ly heart-break­ing sto­ries: Saras­woti has been with the cir­cus for near­ly 15 years and was forced to mar­ry the owner’s son at 14; Shee­tal doesn’t know how old she is or how long she has been gone. When she does find her fam­i­ly, she feels total­ly dis­con­nect­ed from them.

It is evi­dent that the women have a dif­fi­cult time rec­on­cil­ing that their par­ents sold them, no mat­ter how naïve that deci­sion might have been, espe­cial­ly when Saras­woti tells her moth­er, ​“my love has died.” Shee­tal describes being grate­ful for find­ing her fam­i­ly, but not feel­ing love for them. These tru­ly har­row­ing exchanges dri­ve home the grav­i­ty of child traf­fick­ing – lives are ripped apart, fam­i­lies are destroyed, and all to line the pock­ets of sleazy cir­cus owners.

Inter­views and con­ver­sa­tions between Saras­woti and Shee­tal reveal how they deal with their new lives after being res­cued. These are inter­spersed with ethe­re­al shots of the two women per­form­ing. High above the ground, in the green­ery of Nepal, Saras­woti grace­ful­ly walks a tightrope and Shee­tal expert­ly nav­i­gates silk-scarves, with­out a thought for per­son­al safe­ty. The gen­tle music and slow-motion film­ing con­vey a sense of inner peace.

The pair form their own cir­cus with oth­er sur­vivors and it feels like a form of sal­va­tion. Here they are accept­ed, and they trav­el around the world edu­cat­ing oth­ers about their ordeals. The film-mak­ers man­age to explore a rel­a­tive­ly unknown top­ic in a sen­si­tive way, which gives a face to the often clin­i­cal and detached term ​“human trafficking”.