Documentary Film Workshop & Exchange Event

Event Programme

PHYGITAL-OC, a new EU funded project designed to help law enforcement agencies across Europe dismantle organised crime, held a private viewing of a powerful documentary programme in Florence, aimed at showing the horrific reality of human trafficking and the growing need to tackle them.

With organised crime groups becoming more sophisticated and interconnected across Europe, the new project aims to strengthen international co-operation and information sharing among European law enforcement agencies to help dismantle their networks. 

Produced by a Libyan NGO, The Observatory on Gender and Crisis Area, the film was made to showcase the methods used by organised criminal networks and the cost to human lives, particularly women and children, that are impacted by human trafficking. 

With guests from multiple law enforcement agencies, NGO’s, judicial authorities and journalists from across Europe, the event was designed to deepen an understanding of how groups are becoming increasingly more sophisticated in the methods used to traffic people and how they are able to adopt and adapt new digital technologies into the physical world in which they operate.

In response, the PHYGITAL-OC project aims to foster greater co-operation and collaboration across Europe in tackling them. The project is being led by a consortium of leading European agencies involved in dismantling serious organise crime, including the Central Anti-Crime Service of the Italian Ministry of the Interior, Agenfor International, Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), Center for Security Studies (KEMEA), Policia Murcia, CAT Cooperative Sociale and REOC Europe.

Sergio Bianchi, Director of International Research, Agenfor International said, “The horror of human trafficking is growing in scale and sophistication across Europe, impacting the lives of thousands of vulnerable people every single day. Making a film is a great way of telling stories and this film is all about the real human stories behind the real impact of criminal gangs across Europe. Bringing people together to hear them is the only way we can help understand the problem and get solutions shared to stop the groups that operate without any care for the lives that are lost and families and communities that are destroyed.”

Commenting on the importance of the project, Mr. Sergio Bianchi said “Only through better international collaboration and more information sharing can we do our job in dismantling organised crime across Europe. We are proud partners in this project and by showing this film to an international audience we can start to build the alliance of agencies driven by a common purpose, and by exchanging our knowledge of how the gangs perpetrate these crimes we will be empowered to dismantle them, as this project aims to do.”