Hope in Heaven
Film by Meredith Ralston

Hope in Heaven is a documentary that examines the Philippines sex trade and the young women and children it trafficks.
It was part of a five-year development project funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in cooperation with Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) and Saint Mary's University, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Plot
Hope in Heaven, by filmmaker Meredith Ralston, examines the Philippines brutal sex trade and the young women and children it enslaves.
Seen through the eyes of two idealistic female students and a male university professor, the film captures two years of Mila's life and the people who befriend her, the poverty and squalor she lives of Angeles City she lives in.
The documentary depicts the social hygiene clinic in Angeles where hundreds of young women and children line up daily for health checks in primitive conditions.
Interviews with prostitutes, mama-sans, community workers, academics and clients expose the complexity of prostitution in two very different cultures.
The documentary also shows live footage of seventeen children (some as young as ten years old) are rescued from a local brothel in Angeles and caught disturbingly on film.
Funding
Hope in Heaven was part of a five-year development project funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in cooperation with Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) and Saint Mary's University, of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Profits
All profits from the documentary were donated to the Women Helping Women Center in Angeles City, and to Mila, who suffers from tuberculosis.
Produced in association with
The Canadian International Development Agency
CIDA-AUCC TIER 2 UPCD Programme
Mount Saint Vincent University
MSVU Technology Learning and Research Centre
Saint Mary's University
SMU International Activities Office
Meredith Ralston
The documentary was written, directed and produced by Meredith Ralston.
“Hope in Heaven” enters the record as film by Meredith Ralston. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hope, Heaven and Film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2022. The linked authority identifier is Q5899695. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hope in Heaven” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.