‘Still Hope’ Shows Why Faith-Based Films Struggle To Tell Stories About Human Trafficking
(REVIEW) Movies about sex trafficking have slowly and (mostly) quietly gained popularity in Christian circles. The most famous example of this is the massively successful 2023 Angel Studios film “Sound of Freedom.” But there’s also been movies like “Priceless” (2016) and “Pursuit of Freedom” (2022) as well as documentaries such as “Nefarious: Merchant of Souls” (2011) and “Blind Eyes Opened” (2020).
On the one hand, this development is rather surprising. Faith-based films are traditionally marketed to families and churches and therefore tend to avoid topics that might be considered inappropriate for all ages. On the other hand, the trend is not so surprising when placed in a broader cultural context. Members of the faith-based film space have been pushing for more “gritty” storytelling for quite some time.
Filmmaker Spencer Folmar’s “Hard Faith” films and film festivals have promoted the idea that Christian films should depict the darker side of life in order to show how God can rescue people out of it. Similarly, Dallas Jenkins has guided audiences through some of the more challenging storylines of his television series “The Chosen,” proving that Christian viewers are often willing to engage with difficult material when it is framed through faith.
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As gritty storylines go, sex trafficking tracks a lot with increasingly Christian-coded parts of culture. Christians are more and more distinguished from the rest of the culture by being much more family-oriented. And as such are increasingly seeing wider culture as hostile to them and a threat their families. Particularly in sexual ways, hence the culture wars around teachers or Hollywood “grooming” kids. Sex trafficking is (largely) an apolitical topic that still dovetails with these themes.
The latest entry in this sub-genre is “Still Hope,” released by Fathom Entertainment in partnership with Pixels of Hope Studios and Studio 523. The film serves as a useful case study for understanding both the appeal and the limitations of faith-based films that tackle sex trafficking.
While “Still Hope” demonstrates genuine care and earnest intentions, it also reveals that the genre still has significant room to grow before it consistently produces films that are both effective and artistically satisfying.
The story follows Hope, a teenager from a quiet community who finds herself in grave danger when a new “friend” abducts her and sells her into sex trafficking. After years of abuse, Hope is finally rescued and reunited with the family that never gave up searching for her. Although she is physically safe, she struggles to adjust to her former life and to process the trauma she has endured. The film focuses not only on her captivity and rescue but also on the long and painful process of recovery that follows.
“Still Hope” gets many things right in its approach to an extremely difficult subject. The film carefully walks viewers through each stage of Hope’s journey: her life with her family, her abduction, her exploitation, the search efforts on her behalf, her rescue and the aftermath for both Hope and her parents. Importantly, the film does not rush through these events or minimize their impact.
The filmmakers aim to be as gritty as possible while still maintaining a PG-13 tone by avoiding explicit sexual content and limiting on-screen violence. This restraint allows the film to communicate the horror of trafficking without veering into exploitation.
One of the film’s most welcome qualities is its refusal to gloss over the psychological toll of trafficking. Nearly half of the runtime is devoted to Hope’s struggle to recover. She recoils when her father tries to touch her, resists her mother’s attempts to comfort her with Bible verses and emotionally unravels during counseling sessions at a recovery center.
The film also shows the impact on her parents, who wrestle with guilt, grief and confusion as they try to support their daughter without knowing how. In these moments, the film powerfully portrays the idea that Jesus can help those who carry deep trauma while also acknowledging that healing is slow, uneven and not guaranteed. Not everyone receives a neat or happy ending.
Unfortunately, “Still Hope” often feels less like a narrative film and more like a public service announcement. Many of the characters’ choices seem designed primarily to educate the audience rather than to emerge organically from the story. Nearly every decision Hope makes and every reaction she has feels like it exists to illustrate a point about sex trafficking rather than to reveal who she is as a person. At times, it feels as though a narrator could step in to explain how each scene relates to the issue. (PSA Voice: “Know the signs: Is she texting a guy you don’t know? Is she wearing more make up than normal?”).
Hope herself is written as a collection of familiar stereotypes: the bratty teenage daughter and the traumatized victim turned survivor. She never quite becomes a fully realized character. It is difficult to identify any hopes, dreams or defining personality traits she possesses outside of her abduction and survival. As a result, she functions more as a blank slate for viewers to project themselves onto than as a specific individual with a distinct inner life.
This problem extends to nearly every institutional authority figure in the film. From FBI agents to doctors to counselors, these characters often speak like non-playable characters in a video game, delivering stiff and didactic lessons about what sex trafficking looks like, how to identify it, how survivors should behave after rescue and what kind of care they will require.
One extended scene between Hope and her counselor plays out like a training manual for how a counseling session is “supposed” to go. In another faith-based film, this scene could easily have been replaced with a pastor explaining the movie’s moral lesson directly to the audience.
In this sense, despite its gritty subject matter, “Still Hope” falls into familiar faith-based filmmaking traps. It relies on one-dimensional characters and spoon-fed messages delivered by nearly flawless authority figures to ensure that viewers learn the “right lesson.” What it lacks is the willingness to let the experience be messy, ambiguous and personal, which might allow audiences to wrestle with the material on their own terms.
This approach also complicates the portrayal of Hope’s parents. They are depicted as deeply human and flawed and they sometimes make mistakes that worsen Hope’s recovery. In theory, this could have served as a refreshing subversion of faith-based tropes that often portray parents as near-perfect moral guides.
However, because the parents are virtually the only authority figures allowed to be imperfect while all others are treated as unquestionable experts, the result feels unintentionally anti-parent rather than nuanced.
“Still Hope” deserves credit for continuing the faith-based film industry’s move toward grittier stories and for drawing attention to the very real issue of sex trafficking. Its emphasis on recovery rather than focusing solely on rescue is particularly commendable. If the film’s craftsmanship and character development had matched the sincerity of its message, the result could have been something truly powerful.
“Still Hope” will be in theaters starting Feb. 5.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.