GIRL MODEL

“You can't be young enough. Youth is beautiful, there's a luminosity, and that is what my eye is trained to see.” - Model Scout Ashley Arbaugh

In rural Siberia, model scouts and agencies scour the countryside in search of beautiful young girls on the cusp of pubescence to satisfy Japan's insatiable market.

Nadya Vall is 13 years old and a self-described “ordinary country girl”, eager for the opportunity to lift her family out of poverty. Ashley Arbaugh is a deeply ambivalent model scout who ‘discovers' Nadya and sends her, unchaperoned, to Tokyo.

Directed by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon in an understated, observational style, Girl Model is a deeply moving, subtly disturbing glimpse into an under-reported aspect of the fashion industry.

“Redmon and Sabin show admirable restraint in their detachment from this story of innocence chewed up and spat out by a cruelly exploitative industry.” - Hollywood Reporter

Screens with Barbie Blues (Israel, 18 mins).

D/P/S David Redmon, Ashley Sabin Dist Aztec International L English, Russian w/English subtitles TD HD Cam/2011