Sahasi Chori (Brave Girl) Puts a Human Face on Trafficking

For the last few years, I’ve been the lead shorts programmer for the Bend Film Festival, which has involved me watching hundreds and hundreds of short films over several months of submissions. One thing I’ve learned in that time is that it’s easy to tell when you’re watching a terrible one, but when you discover a remarkable short, the feeling is much more ephemeral, making you want to be sure you’ve found something so rare.

Just a few minutes into local filmmaker Erin Galey’s breathtaking short film, “Sahasi Chori (Brave Girl),” it was easy to tell I was seeing something of uncompromising power and importance. Across a deeply moving and infuriating 20 minutes, Galey tells the story of Bhumika, a 13-year-old Nepali girl who leaves her village with a trusted family friend, Krishna, to go work in the city. As they cross the border into Mumbai, she becomes more suspicious that instead of a job, she’s actually being trafficked. What unfurls is profoundly hard to watch and impossible to look away from.

From non-actor Albina Dahal’s unforgettable performance as Bhumika to Galey’s deeply humanist writing and directing, “Sahasi Chori” is a starkly powerful reminder that the short film remains a vital discipline in filmmaking. Just as novelists should hone their craft with short stories, filmmakers should practice honing structure with shorts.

I talked a little with writer/director Erin Galey about how she became involved with the film and her history in the region. The interview has been edited for length.

The Source: How did you get involved with making “Sahasi Chori (Brave Girl)?”

Erin Galey: I attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in Asia for my Master’s degree in Film Production, which, being based in Singapore, gave students many opportunities to travel in the region. When a friend heard I was in Singapore, she asked me to help make a documentary in Nepal about her organization that was helping Nepali women learn to kayak and whitewater raft guide as a career. I jumped at the opportunity as I hadn’t been to Nepal before, I loved river travel, and was fascinated by her story and the girls she was helping. On a river trip with these girls, she shared some concerns about a girl who disappeared from her program and her village. This got me very curious, and I began a detective-like journey that uncovered a hidden world in Nepal. I asked my friend if she knew a local Nepali producer so I might enlist their help and perspective, and that was how I found Binod Adhikari, who became our key local producer on the project. I explained to Binod two things — first, I wanted to talk to survivors of trafficking, so we might better understand their story, and despite this being a very awkward ask for any man in Nepal, he went out of his way to find several women willing to share their stories. I think this process had a pretty profound effect on him. Second, I explained it was important to understand how a girl would get from her tiny village in the mountains to the bustling metropolis of Mumbai, and perhaps it would be worth doing that journey together, staying only where locals might stay. He hesitated about the “only locals” request – ‘Are you sure?’ he said – which made me even more curious and encouraged that we must go. We started at his home village in the mountains outside Kathmandu, and as I got to know the local ways, I slept in a small loft above the yaks and goats in the barn. Once we set out on the road trip, the script practically wrote itself. I still can’t thank him enough for his immeasurable contribution to the project.

tS: The performances you got from Bhumika and Krishna are pretty incredible. Were they non-actors, or did you cast them through more traditional means?

EG: Our lead, Albina Dahal, who plays Bhumika, was a non-actor. Everyone else were experienced actors. We began the search early in pre-production for an authentic Bhumika by visiting local village schools with Binod. I always wanted to work with a non-actor for the lead role as I felt it would be more authentic. There was also a lack of young actresses in Nepal her age, mostly because it’s not a traditional route for young Nepali women, so using a non-actor was a natural choice for the region.

tS: The film has such a hard-hitting and hopeless ending. What do you recommend for viewers who want to help after watching the film?

EG: First, the best thing anyone can do for young women like Bhumika is support their education. Women and girls are often last in line in their families to be considered for school, but once they go, they become more useful to the family despite the burden of losing their help at home for the years they’re in school. I really love this charity out of California called Empower Nepali Girls because the donors actually travel to Nepal and help support the girls firsthand by giving them backpacks, school clothes, books and such, and paying for their education. I think it’s something like $100-$200 USD to put a girl through school for one year, which keeps her off the streets and out of the hands of traffickers. The Unatti Foundation does similar work there. And I always love supporting Maiti Nepal, founded by CNN’s Hero of the Year 2010, Anuradha Koirala, because they are doing the on-the-ground anti trafficking work and rescuing girls from situations they’ve ended up in without knowing how to get out. Anuradha also supported “Sahasi Chori (Brave Girl)” in our initial fundraising stages. There are many more foundations out there but these three I have firsthand experience with and can vouch that they’re doing real and good work.

tS: What made you want to make “Sahasi Chori” as a short? Were you at all tempted to turn it into a feature?

EG: I was VERY tempted to turn it into a feature, but our resources only allowed us to make a short. The filming conditions were pretty challenging and I’m just so glad we got to make this film at all. I still look back on that shoot and think to myself, ‘wow, how did I manage to pull all of that off?!’ (And also, ‘why did I do that to myself?’ ha ha ha). Remember, this was pre-drones, pre-handheld stabilizers outside a steadicam (which we couldn’t afford at the time), pre-LED lights (yes, we shipped HMIs from Los Angeles), and we were working in conditions where power outages were fairly common and gas for the generator was not always easy to come by. Had we shot this story anywhere in America, it probably would have taken 10 or 11 days, and we would have had access to much more modern equipment. But due to the nature of everything being the way it is in Nepal – hiking to locations, power outages, getting gear in remote areas, travel between locations – we budgeted 18 days and really needed every minute of it. I do have a feature script for it. The short is basically a proof of concept for a feature.

tS: What are you working on now?

EG: I’m currently working on several feature projects, one of which went through Bendfilm’s: Basecamp program in 2024, and which recently won the Final Draft Big Break competition in the Science Fiction category, and was also a second rounder at both the Austin Film Festival and the Sundance Development Track. It’s called “See You See Me,” and is a grounded sci-fi thriller about a girl who wakes up from a two-year coma and is forced to face a family secret about her origins that threatens her very existence. I’m excited to shoot something at home, in English, in my favorite genre (thriller), and set in the Pacific Northwest – a place I’ve called home since making “Sahasi Chori (Brave Girl),” and which has its own beauty and dramatic underbelly. It’s a very modern and American thriller that explores our relationship with control & denial, set at the edge of grief. It takes the audience through a maze-style, heart-pounding thriller with some pretty big twists. It also truly excites me as a storyteller. We’re currently in our first round of fundraising a bit of seed money to start casting and packaging the film, so that’s all very exciting. Stay tuned!

How to watch “Sahasi Chori (Brave Girl)”:

Vimeo On Demand - https://vimeo.com/ondemand/sahasichoribravegirl

Apple TV - https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/sahasi-chori-brave-girl/

Google Play - https://play.google.com/store/movies/details?id=00sRvlQ0TEs.P&sticky_source_country=US&gl=US&hl=en&pli=1

This article appears in the Source March 5, 2026.