Girl Model - Trailer

In rural Siberia, Russian and American model scouts scour remote villages in search of teenage girls to satisfy the Japanese market's unquenchable thirst. For poor, pretty farm girls, the promise of work abroad signifies the rare chance for a new life. David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's provocative documentary explores this dark, seldom-seen segment of the modeling industry through two primary subjects.

Ashley used to be a model in the United States. Now she's a professional scout who is conflicted over the fact that her livelihood depends on recruiting the youngest girls possible based on promises that aren't always realized. Nadya is a 13-year-old country girl from Novosibirsk, Siberia, who embodies the particular kind of youthful innocence so highly sought-after in Japan. Hoping to help support her tight-knit family, she travels to Tokyo, but once there, she finds the frustrating reality of how jobs are booked is much different from what she expected.

Strikingly composed, Girl Model follows its subjects through a frustrating maze of casting sessions, clashes and contradictions. Redmon and Sabin juxtapose video diaries that Ashley recorded from her years as a model with her current life as a scout, revealing the precariousness and complexities of the business from both sides of the coin. As Nadya and the other young girls like her find themselves lost in a harrowing hall of mirrors, will they learn to navigate the modeling world, or wind up returning home in debt to their agencies?

• Category

  Film & Animation

[hatestrafficlights]

The most disturbing parts of this movie were not the casting calls where the girls were forced to parade in front of the scouts, but the creepy and unhinged behaviour of Ashley Arbaugh, who takes photos of the girls literally under the table and keeps them in a secret box in her bathroom, and clearly idolises "Tigran", the sleazy boss who runs NOAH models, and claims to be now be "helping" these desperate people, but putting the girls in debt to the agency through lies and fraud.

[Sarah faber]

ashley, the  booker, is sick, obsessed...

[SnrFrijolero]

modeling industry, the conceited sister of Hollywood, hahahhahahaha.

[Anunnaki Gold]

Ashley and Tigran need to be assassinated with a bolt action rifle.

[Kyle Christensen]

thanks!

[Ally Bing]

I was surprised to read after watching the full film that the whole idea for the doco in the first place was Ashley Arbaugh's. Was this her apology? A cry for help? A scheme for celebrity?

[nccrawford]

Wow. I just finished watching this, and just moments into it I was reaching for the computer to search for Ashley Arbaugh and see if I could figure out exactly why she seems so vacuous. When I saw that there was some outrage over the film (I'd never heard of it before today) I started it again, and was shocked. Ashley is as broken a person as I've seen in years. I've read that she didn't even care how she came across when she first saw the movie...

[yenelly tejada]

I saw that yesterday and I'm really prud of nadya she became a good model is on nexflix

[lonny42]

Watching this really pissed me off. In Ashleys case it's wrong but understandable why she's such a creep herself, the abused become the abusers. Those poor little girls just want to be at home with their families who do care about them. It becomes obvious to them as soon as they get to Japan that all the sweet talk and promises of money were complete bullshit. They're just kids for christsakes. They need to be doing kid stuff, not this bullshit. Wish I could help them.

[ladybug50100]

There all sicko's, And the worst to me was this Ashley Arbaugh, They all lied to these poor girls. Shut SWITCH MODEL AGENCY DOWN.......

[Alejandro Valdez]

The only thing I found annoying about this film was listening to that Ashley chic whine about her personal life. I thought it insists upon itself when she stares off and speaks delicately about what anyone would assume to be pure evil. I wonder how many takes they did before they got those melodramatic train scenes the way they wanted them. So stupid.

[loesjuhb]

Ashley is seriously disturbed.