Storyville (1997)

Season 22: Episode 9

A Woman Captured is a raw and intimate portrayal of the psychology behind enslavement. Director Bernadett Tuza-Ritter offers an evocative study of a woman so debased and disregarded that even she has lost sight of her own life. A 52-year-old Hungarian woman has been kept by a family as a domestic slave for a decade. Marish has been exploited and abused by a woman for whom she toils as a housekeeper - entirely unpaid, performing all manner of back-breaking household duties seven days a week. In exchange, she only gets cigarettes, leftovers and a couch to sleep on. The money she earns from night shifts in a factory is taken away from her. Deprived of her ID and deep in forced debt, she is forbidden to even leave the house without permission. Marish's 16-year-old daughter ran away a couple of years ago, unable to bear her circumstances any longer.