'I am a Girl', an Australian documentary focusing on the inequalities of life as a girl

ABC Updated September 2, 2013, 

Two girls from PNG and Cambodia feature in an award-winning Australian director's critically acclaimed film about the lives of girls around the world.

Rebecca Barry had wanted to make the film about the unique challenges faced by girls around the world, but it wasn't until she had faced the 2009 Pacific tsunami while in Samoa that she started working on the idea.

"It really kind of kicked me into action that I had to really focus on the important stuff and make a film about girls and why is it like this and celebrate their potential through making a film," she says.

Ms Barry's follows the lives of 6 girls, each has a different story to tell and two of the most powerful are from Cambodia and Papua New Guinea.

Ms Barry says she was drawn to PNG as it is Australia's closest neighbour.

"It's a very close plane ride and you arrive and it's this other world", she says.

The story she tells in Papua New Guinea is about Manu who is 17 and about to give birth.

Ms Barry says she chose the issue of childbirth as she was shocked by the statistics, "I think it's (PNG) the second highest mortality rate for women and girls having children or pregnancy in the Asia Pacific region."

In the film she follows Manu in the lead up to her labour and witnesses the birth of her baby boy. The film shows confronting scenes in the labour ward of Port Moresby General Hospital.

"It was like Dante's 'Inferno'. It was like an orchestra of screaming women and babies," she says.

In the busy maternity ward at POM general there are only 23 beds and 3 midwives on a good day.

Manu did not intend to get pregnant and like many girls in Papua New Guinea she had little sexual health education. She shares her experience of the first time she had sex, saying, "I didn't know how to use condoms."

While her story is challenging it has an element of hope and happiness to it. Others will bring the viewer to tears.

Cambodian teenager Kimsey first appears in the film as a 14 year old telling how she had to sell her virginity aged twelve so her family could eat.

She says she didn't know what that meant at the time.

Ms Barry shares what happens to Kimsey's over 3 years of her life and it makes difficult viewing.

Kimsey shares her experiences of life as a teenage sex worker in Cambodia, an all too often experience for girls in the country,

Ms Barry says she wanted to tell the Cambodian story as it is an example of a much bigger problem, "we had many girls to choose from (to tell the story) which is the the sad thing about the story."

The film also looks at the lives of girls in Afghanistan, Cameroon, Australia and America. It is currently being shown in Sydney and Melbourne in Australia but Ms Barry hopes to take it to the places where it was filmed.