It’s rare to find myself thinking about a documentary daily - even hourly - after watching it. In most cases it sits with you and you keep things moving but getting the chance to screen the new Sextortion film by director Maria Demeshkina Peek and Stephen Peek my mind was completely blown. For 90 minutes, I remained glued to my screen and realized this should be a must-watch in every school system across the nation especially as social media continues to rise.

With jam-packed schedules and excitement to get their emotionally-driven and eye-opening Sextortion film out to the masses Friday, October 7 across streaming platforms like Apple TV/iTunes, the Peeks took time to speak to Attack The Culture about why this is not your typical thought-provoking and real-life documentary.

Buckle up for a few highlights from the conversation and keep scrolling to view the entire interview.

Where in the world did the motivation and need to put this entire project together come from because it’s an absolute must-watch.

Maria: People approached Stephen first at the end of 2019 and pitched this project to him. It was originally supposed to be documentary in Orange County following human trafficking with lots of guns and lots of action. That all had to be scraped at the beginning of 2020 because as you well know what happened. We had to stay on the East Coast and look for a case to demonstrate this specific crime because the more we were doing research, the more we realized kids were online and this is happening to them with a 1,000 percent higher rate than human trafficking and no one is talking about it. Nobody knows about it.

We’re the parents of, back then 9 and 11-year-old girls, and now they’re 11 and 14 and we felt we were supposed to tell this story and the Department of Homeland Security disclosed this case for us and gave us all the files so we had all the tools we needed to tell this story and keep people’s attention.

Stephen: It’s crazy. Two years ago we didn’t even know sextortion was a thing. As Maria said, we’re parents and we’re researching and deciding should we make this movie, we found like 50 documentaries on trafficking and found nothing on this which is as Maria said a thousand times more prevalent than trafficking.

We also found out that the 10 to 15-year-olds are the most at-risk group for this and our girls were right smack dab right in the middle of this. It was very personal for us and we realized people just don’t know about it and it really is the fastest growing crime in the world that nobody knows about. So we realized we gotta make this movie.

“Sextortion: The Hidden Pandemic” iTunes:

https://geni.us/Sextortion

“Sextortion: The Hidden Pandemic” Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/2p92rkyu

“Sextortion: The Hidden Pandemic” Vudu: https://tinyurl.com/2yvshvtj

“Sextortion: The Hidden Pandemic” YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1flq04Rp_o

This is one of those films I could not take my eyes off of. The storytelling. The cases. Daniel Harris. Oh my god. I don’t want to spoil it for people who are going to watch it for the first time but the way you both edited it and made it feel so flawless - just talk about the presentation - I couldn’t look away.

Maria: Thank-you for saying all those things but we definitely wanted to keep audience’s attention. We wanted to have that really strong, true crime element to it so people could understand from a granule level but also have their attention kept and they can’t leave.

This case, several other production companies wanted to make this film however the pandemic hit and we were the ones trusted with it and it was amazing to us that every single point we wanted to make happened in this case and even more content which will blow your mind.

We even had to hire artists in the Ukraine to paint and do drawings using the photos of our actual people because we couldn’t physically go into the courtrooms and film. All the way until 2021, we couldn’t even use actors so we had to animate moments and use that to kind of progress the story forward - there were definitely challenges and we even traveled in an RV instead of airplanes because of the locations because we couldn’t physically get into an airplane and then interview a federal agent. It just wasn’t an option before vaccinations and all of that.

A lot of challenges. A lot of mental health challenges. With October, it’s mental awareness - as a parent you might not want to talk about it and put your head into the sand. No, this doesn’t happen. Unfortunately it happens. Every day, one in seven children, new data suggests one in four children are being targeted online.

Within moments of seeing this - kids need to see this. I think about back in the day being in school and watching sex ed videos. This has to be in some type of curriculum. I don’t know if it’s high school or middle school but is there any thought of trying to maybe getting schools to bring this in and view?

Maria: Absolutely. Number one, we cleaned up this case so much that it’s rated PG compared to what we had which was R in an actual case files with the thought that all middle school and high school students should see this. We started working with the National Center of Exploited Children and Homeland Security agents to put together modules based on the film with Q&A.

This is going to be extended into a library. After this is released, we’re going to work on expanding a library of stories from different children to prevent this from happening to the next kid.

Stephen: We’re realizing talking to a lot of people on the front lines that we literally cannot arrest ourselves out of this problem. We were told if every agent was working 24/7, 365 they couldn’t keep up. It’s become crystal clear that we have to move toward prevention.

We have to get parents and kids to see what’s happening. Then we can start to move these numbers. That’s when we realized that true crime is so popular like Maria was saying so if we use these true crime tropes to tell a story, it doesn’t feel like you’re getting a lecture. And a lot of the prevention material is either geared for really little kids or they’re pretty cheesy and so we said let’s use this fantastical case of a top gun pilot and naval academy graduate in the year the Top Gun: Maverick movie comes out, we couldn’t even plan that any better, right?

To use this in a way that teens and their parents can see something in a new way and not be bored to tears.

Check out the full interview with Maria and Stephen below: