Nefarious: Merchant of Souls
"Nefarious" was written, directed, produced and narrated by Benjamin Nolot, founder and president of Exodus Cry, the film's distributor. Nolot, who travelled to 19 countries to collect the film's content, said that the purpose of the film is "to draw people's attention to the issue, but also to inspire them in terms of what they can be doing … to take a stand against this injustice." The film was officially released on July 27, 2011, with individual grassroots screenings also taking place. Laila Mickelwait, Exodus Cry's director of awareness and prevention, screened the film in several countries in an attempt to persuade governments to make laws similar to Sweden's "Sex Purchase Act", which criminalizes the purchasing rather than the selling of sex. The film was released on home video on May 1, 2012.
Barry Avrich
Avrich created Melbar Entertainment Group in 1998 to produce documentary films. Along with producers Nat Brescia and Tori Hockin Laurence, Avrich has directed and produced many documentaries and television specials. His focus is generally on the entertainment industry and television specials including the music special, "Bowfire" for PBS (2008), "One x One Gala" (2007) for CTV and "Caesar and Cleopatra" (2009) for Bravo and CTV. Other films have chronicled defense attorney Edward Greenspan and the Rolling Stones promoter Michael Cohl. Recent projects have included films about Winston Churchill and David Steinberg. His 2010 film "" went into limited release in February 2011. "The Last Mogul" (2005) is probably his best known film to date. The "Variety" critic Robert Koehler said of the documentary about Lew Wasserman, it "draws a full and balanced measure of the man, from his stratospheric rise to a remarkably humbling fall, and includes as thorough a study of the super-agent-turned-mogul's shady ties with organized crime as any feature docu could hope to muster."