On Wednesday night, influencers in media and activism gathered at the Paley Center for Media to celebrate the first private screening of The Long Night. MediaStorm’s first feature-length film and the first project funded by the Alexia Foundation’s Women’s Initiative grant, The Long Night is a shining example of both organizations’ commitment to driving change through the power of storytelling.

“When we first started working on this film, we thought we were producing a 10-minute piece about domestic minor sex trafficking in our country today,” executive producer Brian Storm said while introducing the film. “We quickly realized that this story was too big and too important to try to fit into that framework.”

The Long Night follows the lives of Lisa and Natalie, two girls who were forced to work the streets of Seattle at just 13 and 15 years old. For over a year, filmmaker Tim Matsui delved deeply into their lives, into the lives of their loved ones, and the men and women who fight for their survival. Months of post-production work by MediaStorm’s Tim McLaughlin and Joe Fuller weaved the subjects’ stories together to shed light on the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

The screening was followed by a panel discussion led by civil rights and women’s justice advocate Gloria Browne-Marshall. Filmmaker Tim Matsui, sex trafficking abolitionist Rachel Lloyd of GEMS, and film subjects Natalie, Nacole and Tom discussed the obstacles faced by young people in the grips of sex work and how to advocate for solutions to this complicated issue.

We heard many things as the audience filed out of theater, trying to wrap their minds around the dangers faced by children in our own communities.

“Shocking.”

“Powerful.”

“Amazing.”

“Gritty.”

“Important.”

Of all the things that were said that evening, nothing encapsulates the spirit of The Long Night quite like the words of the film’s protagonist Natalie: “Someone else might see this and understand that other people go through this. It’s not just me. Maybe there are a lot positive things later that are going to happen.”