Lilja lives in poverty and dreams of a better life. Her mother moves to the United States and abandons her to her aunt, who neglects her. Lilja hangs out with her friends, Natasha and Volodya, who is suicidal. Desperate for money, she starts working as a prostitute, and later meets Andrei. He offers her a good job in Sweden, but when Lilja arrives her life quickly enters a downward spiral. Watch Lilja 4-Ever if you’re ready to throw yourself head first into an abyss of poverty, abuse and horror — the most horrifying thing about it being how relentlessly truthful its depiction of reality is. It’s a work of paralyzing realism that, rather than relying on the insane or the supernatural to frighten viewers, simply drops them into the existence of a terribly unlucky adolescent girl in Eastern Europe who, after being abandoned by her family and all but one of her friends, regrettably resorts to prostituting herself in order to eat, in order to survive. -- (Text and image)

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