My Sextortion Diary may only be just over an hour in length, but it is a powerful and provocative real-life story, prescient in reflecting the unhappy reality facing those people who are forced to deal with the awful behaviour of unscrupulous hackers, and handled in moving matter-of-fact style by Spanish filmmaker Patricia Franquesa as she recounts the terrible ordeal she had to suffer.
The film – which premiered at SXSW earlier this year – opens with a simple and disturbing message as she types on screen. “Sextortion is the most prevalent form of Intimate Image Abuse that the Revenge Porn Helpline has seen in 2022,” adding that the actual number of victims is largely unknown as, in the main, they choose not to report out of shame or embarrassment.
In May of 2019 Patricia meets up with her ex for lunch in a Madrid bar prior to a business meeting. There her laptop is stolen, and two months later, an anonymous Hacker threatens to reveal her sexually suggestive photos to all her work contacts and social media friends if she doesn’t pay $2400 to a bitcoin account.
She talks to the Spanish authorities, but realises that the police and the courts seem unable to protect her. Her hacker starts to leak a handful of private photographs, mainly to force her to send money. As a way of fighting back she starts to develop a project titled ‘Digital Vagina’ which dwells on what happened to her, and begins to think the hacker may have given up, but while at the Locarno Film Festival (where she is pitching the project) he returns to try and get her to negotiate.
There is brief hope when two men are arrested for stealing her laptop, but despite tracking down the hacker’s IP address herself she still finds it leads to no easy resolutions. She admits to no longer feeling protected by the police, and – in a plot twist of sorts – decides to address the issue ahead on.
Franquesa uses split-screen and on-screen text messages and email exchanges to help tell her dark story – as well as astutely allowing moments of pensive silence in her flat – as she tries to come to terms with what happened to her. With the support of friends she finds a real sense of strength as she ultimately decides to take matters into her own hands. Her sense of humour and honesty may sit at the heart of the film, but there is no denying the sad and dreadful truth of the threat of online blackmail which turns out to be worryingly common.
Though brief and concise in tone and structure, My Sextortion Diary is also a prescient and upsetting story that reflects the unhappy reality facing those people who are forced to deal with the awful behaviour of unscrupulous hackers. Patricia Franquesa’s story may well entail a level of empowerment, but there are not so many in a position to deal with things in the same manner.
Spain, 2024, 64mins
Dir/scr: Patricia Franquesa
Production: Gadea Films, Ringo Media & 3Cat
International sales: Taskovski Films
Producers: Patricia Franquesa, Mireia Graell Vivancos
Editor/cinematography: Patricia Franques
Music: Laura Casaponsa
