International Justice Mission

Freedom in the Little Things

OX was commissioned by International Justice Mission to develop the screenplay and produce a film for their campaign, The Little Things. The campaign draws attention to forced labor, a form of modern slavery where people are coerced into work through violence, debt bondage, or deception, and are unable to leave. Millions of people around the world are living inside that reality today, many of them separated from their families for extended amounts of time, even the rest of their lives.

To develop the screenplay, we drew on the real experience of Appa Rao, a grandfather who spent years in forced labor, separated from the people and routines that made up his life, before eventually being reunited with his family. His story provided a clear question to build from: what exactly does forced labor take away?

Universal storytelling as a bridge

Forced labor is one of those issues that few people within IJM’s audience have direct experience of or personal connection to. To build a film that could genuinely move people toward the cause, OX needed to develop a narrative that not only tied into the wider brand campaign but also connected with audiences through our shared human experience.

The story of forced labor doesn’t have to be told through the experience of captivity itself. It can be told through what surrounds it. The everyday moments of family life that are taken away, and the felt absence of those moments, speak to something most people understand regardless of how far removed they are from the reality of forced labor. The absence becomes the bridge, connecting audiences not only to the injustice but to the full humanity of the people living inside it.

​​We structured the telling of Appa Rao's story around repetition. The film shares common moments of everyday connection across three chapters of the story, each time with a different quality. By returning to those same rhythms, the film builds an assumption in the audience about how life in this household works. When that cycle is broken by the absence of a family member taken into forced labor, the audience can easily understand and connect to the reality that seemingly small everyday experiences with your loved ones turn into immense loss due to forced labor. Each viewer can be thankful for the little things in their lives while being invited to respond to the urgency of the cause.

Leading with cultural integrity

Universal storytelling does not remove cultural specificity. In fact, the opposite is true. When audiences encounter stories from other parts of the world, cultural authenticity is essential for the narrative to feel credible.

From the beginning, the screenplay was developed alongside OX’s regional teams to ensure the world of the film truly reflected the culture it represented. Dialogue, contexts and family dynamics were reviewed and refined throughout development and production.

Language provided one of the clearest examples of this process. The script was written in English and translated into Telugu for filming. During translation, the campaign phrase “the little things” revealed itself to be culturally specific language with no direct equivalent. The phrase was translated into Telugu as “little tiny happiness,” capturing the same emotional idea while allowing the concept to remain contextually relevant and understood by the local actors and crew helping to shape the film.

Cross-cultural film production

Cross-cultural filmmaking depends on careful attention to the details that shape how a culture is represented on screen. Throughout production, our team worked closely across scripting, performance, and environment design to ensure cultural integrity remained intact. Household objects, gestures, and scene blocking surrounding a shared meal were all reviewed carefully during and after filming.

These elements may appear small within the frame, yet they carry significant weight in how audiences perceive authenticity. When stories rely on diverse cultural environments, accuracy in these details allows the universal narrative to resonate without flattening the culture it represents.

The Little Things explored the meaning of freedom through the moments that define everyday life. The filmmaking process earned its truth through the same attention to the small details that shaped the campaign itself.