Los Angeles debut of Victory Day, in aid of human trafficking

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Steve Clark, Publicist
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VICTORY DAY PREMIERE SCREENING GALA

Los Angeles, CA – The Royal Theatre in Los Angeles will see the premiere of Victory Day on November 5, 2009. The film will be followed by a reception and discussion with the writer/director Sean Ramsay and members of the cast. Champagne and caviar will be served preceding the screening.
Victory Day is a bold, provocative thriller that explores the shadowy world of the cabal of Russian oligarchs who secretly control the economies in Eastern Europe. Writer/director Sean Ramsay stars as Sam Cassels, a photojournalist with a penchant for using his fists as well as his camera. Sam finds himself amidst crime, corruption and romance when he meets Oksana (Natalie Shiyanova), a fierce small town Russian girl who is the victim of sex-trade traffickers. As Sam is drawn into the shadowy corners of corrupt power-brokers, he also finds himself having to save the beautiful Oksana. Once he was an objective reporter of events. Now Sam is a man on a mission of vengeance.
Shot in Russia, The Czech Republic and Australia, Victory Day is a visually stunning exploration of the new reality of modern Russia.

Writer, director and star Sean Ramsay is a Pulitzer Prize nominated photojournalist whose nonpareil life experiences inform the story of Victory Day. Sean’s impressive record is a virtual who’s who and where’s where of the world’s hottest hot spots. He spent years covering Russia for Reuters news service during the turbulent nineties that is the setting of Victory Day. Ramsay was the last Western journalist on Tiananmen Square the night of June 4, 1989. He was among the first journalists allowed into the notorious Abu Ghraib prison scandal. He has covered the war in Afghanistan and was kidnapped and held captive while covering the second war in Iraq.
Asked why he was moved to make this film, Mr. Ramsay said, “This film and the project is basically an extension of the work I did as a journalist finding out what’s going on and reporting it. It’s my hope that a movie like this can have an impact to change things for the people who need it, help the victims and bring an end to human trafficking.”



Sean Ramsay BIOGRAPHY

Sean Ramsay was born in San Diego, California in 1963. He studied political science at University of California at Berkeley, then started his professional journalism career working for Reuters Pictures as a news photographer. With a brief intermission to study film in the Graduate School of Film and Television at UCLA, he continued with Reuters and took extensive postings overseas, including over a dozen years in China and Russia, covering the numerous political and economic stories including the Tiananmen Uprising for which he was nominated for Pulitzer Prize, and the conflicts in the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, and Iraq as late as 2004.

As a filmmaker, there are several short film narratives and documentaries he authored, including: a China Diary, an Unfinished Story in Siberia, and
Picture This. Victory Day is the first narrative feature film produced and directed by Ramsay.

Ramsay has also been involved in charitable work, promoting and fundraising for a shelter for Battered Women in Gyumri, Armenia, which was started by his mother, Beverly Ramsay in 2000. The Victory Day Project is an extension of Sean’s film and journalism work and the Ramsay families’ advocacy work to end violence against women and stop trafficking in Eastern Europe