I've said it before and I'll say it again: the best movies never get the attention that they deserve. Take for instance this "Lilja 4-ever". It has never been in any large movie theater and is only shown on festivals or on specialized TV stations that broadcast more non-commercial movies. That's also how I got to see it. I knew about this movie, but had never been able to give it a try, until two days ago when it was finally shown on national television.

Lilja is a 16 year old Estonian girl who will move with her mother and her mother's new boyfriend to the USA. But when it's about time to leave, her mother tells her that she can't come with them right now. She will have to stay for a while, following them to the USA afterward and until then her mother will send her money. But once they are gone, it quickly gets clear that they have abandoned Lilja and don't want to see her ever again. She doesn't really have anyone to take care of her and has only one real friend, the young boy Volodja. Completely out of money, she decides to sell the only thing that she has left, her body. She picks up older men in a disco until one day she meets Andrej, a nice boy of her own age. She falls deeply in love with him and when he tells her that she can come with him to Sweden to find a well-payed job and a beautiful apartment so she can start an entire new life far away of all the misery, she is convinced that for once and for all her luck has changed...

Just after I saw the movie, I went to bed to get some sleep, but the entire movie just kept spooking through my head all the time, keeping me awake for hours. Even now, I'm still thinking about the horrible faith of that poor girl. That has a lot to do with the excellent acting of course. Oksana Akinshina is a complete stranger to me, but her performance was so incredibly good and so believable, that you might easily forget that you are watching a movie instead of a real life documentary. Artyom Bogucharsky as Volodya, Pavel Ponomaryov as Andrej, Liliya Shinkaryova as Lilja's aunt,... None of them is famous or has played in many other movies, but one by one, they play their roles as if they have never done anything else in their entire lives.

"Lilja 4-ever" isn't exactly a movie that will make you happy. I would even say that its story will leave you behind completely devastated, but will also keep you thinking about Lilja for days after you've seen it. That's what happened to me and that's something that I haven't experienced too often yet. If you are strong enough to cope with the hard reality, then you should definitely give this movie a try. In my opinion there is only one appropriate rating for a movie like this one and that is 10/10!!!

Abandoned by her mother, a teen-aged girl fights for survival in the slums of Estonia. This depressing film covers the same territory as other recent films set in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The story is predictable and clichés abound. It gradually moves from an OK beginning to a ho-hum middle to an ending featuring angel wings that is so ridiculously bad that one has to wonder if it's meant to be some sort of parody. The whole tone of the film is so grim and serious that any laughs are purely unintentional. The hand-held camera work is annoying, as is the soundtrack. Moodysson's tendency towards melodramatics doesn't help matters.

Director Lukas Moodysson has achieved a film that is so moving that it is hard to forget it after leaving the theater. Images come back into one's mind about this story about this girl. The tragedy of her life is something to be shocked and alarmed.

To think there are out there, in the so-called civilized world, people that take advantage of girls like Lilja is mind boggling. Lilja's mother has to be one of the worst monsters ever presented in a film. This woman abandons her 16 year old daughter because she has found a meal ticket with a man that will probably end up leaving her as well.

Lilja is beautifully portrayed by Oksana Akinshina. The actress and her character disappear in front of your eyes. The story is very true as thousands of naive girls are exported from what it was the old Soviet Union to other countries in order to force them into prostitution. This story is constantly in the news, yet more and more young girls are duped into going abroad with the promise of highly paid jobs that exist only for the people who exploit them.

Her only friend is Volodya, also a very sad boy who is thrown out of his own house by an abusive father. Volodya and Lilja form a bond as they cling to one another. The little boy is street wise; he knows the fate that awaits Lilja in Sweden. Their friendship is the only thing they both have.

The sad part of the film is the realization that so called "normal" and perfectly "respectful" people are the same ones that brutalize these children. They use Lilja to satisfy their sexual appetites, then discard her like yesterday's trash. To know that there are people like that in our society is a very sad commentary about our world.

Contrary to what many people have commented about the film, I thought that in spite of the tragedy of Lilja's and Volodya's lives, it had a very positive ending because both are free to run around in a better place together, which is not a luxury most of us have on our time in this planet.

Mr. Moodysson gives us a film that will shock; he dares to go where others wouldn't. A job well done..