PRESS

“Looking into Olivia’s huge brown eyes, full of hope despite everything…There is no gore here, and no on-screen violence, but this is in every way a horror movie.” – The NY Times

“Riveting and infuriating all at once!” – LA Weekly

“Vale is an efficient journalist, packing in facts and riveting interviews…There are many reasons to see this very difficult film, not least to face the grim realities in Liberia” – Village Voice

“Almost seven years after democratically electing its first president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, both sides of the decades long Liberia civil war still bare emotional and physical scars. The hardest hit by the horrendous violence were women and girls as young as infants through sexual assault. More over, rape is still the most reported crime in the country. There isn’t a piece of work which illustrates this horrific reality more than Jessica Vale’s haunting documentary Small Small Thing.” – The Script Lab

“My husband learned that this documentary was about child rape in Liberia, decided it was a little heavy for a Sunday afternoon, and went to see the “G.I. Joe” sequel instead. And it’s true that Jessica Vale’s moving work is not always easy to watch. But it should be required, but it makes you angry enough to want to do something. Vale and producer Nika Offenbac follow Olivia Zinnah, who they meet recovering in a Liberian hospital after being raped by a relative. Grim, unbelievably brutal stuff, to be sure, but Vale manages to present a brief history lesson of the country’s founding, its idealism and colonialism, its child soldiers who rise from their own victimhood to turn their anger and stolen childhood on others, and the thwarted promises of political intervention. Olivia’s fate is spelled out in the film’s promotional material, but I won’t spill it here, because you’ll want to meet her and be riveted by her story, and the journey of her countrymen and women, on your own.” – Leslie Gray Streeter, Palm Beach Post