Migrant domestic workers from Kenya, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Ghana, hired as maids under the Kafala system in Lebanon, are not considered employees since they are given food and lodging, and ostensibly, live as part of their employer's family. Kept in tiny quarters, held captive without access to their passports, denied salaries and time off, they are caught in a system that operates as a sponsorship program in theory, but as slavery in practice. Anonymous sources from a multitude of perspectives speak without being seen—from employers to agents to maids—to heighten the invisibility of this human rights issue that implicates many Arab nations, where keeping up appearances and having maids is a measure of status.

Dir. Roser Corella - 73min - 2021, Germany, Austria

"Roser Corella’s documentary begins in a place of darkness: a black screen overlaid with an inquiring phone call placed to a domestic employment agency. Listing possible candidates according to their nationalities and pay rates, the conversation is shocking in its matter-of-fact callousness, as if the women were merely household appliances to be purchased and owned." - Guardian

"plays an urgent role in exposing the recruitment, trafficking and abuse of vulnerable women working within the Kafala system, which is accepted as commonplace, operates with impunity and will persist as long as capitalism relies on controlling and exploiting labour." - HotDocs

"Meagre wages, manipulation and a room without windows. Lebanon’s countless maids fight back in an examination of the mechanisms of modern slavery." - CPH Dox