Film targets human trafficking
Movie screened in Bayou City, which has been a hub for the crime
Actors Patrick Duffy and Anne Archer appeared at the Wortham Center on Monday for a special advance screening of “Trafficked,” a feature film about global human trafficking.
The screening was arranged by Mayor Sylvester Turner’s Anti-Human Trafficking Strategic Plan. Turner also appeared at the event and spoke to attendees beforehand.
They were joined by screenwriter Siddharth Kara, an adjunct lecturer at Harvard University and author of “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery.” His research into the multibillion-dollar industry informed the film directed by Will Wallace.
Both Duffy and Kara told reporters their goal with the film was to inform the greatest number of people possible about the underground practice.
Though “Trafficked” — which also stars Ashley Judd and Houston native Sean Patrick Flanery — is a feature film, Duffy called it “a documentary depicting real things.
“This is not entertainment,” he said. “This is an eye-opening experience.”
Kara has studied trafficking for 16 years. His script drew heavily from his first book on the subject, published in 2009. Human trafficking — for sex and labor — has continued to rise in the time since he wrote that book.
The film attempts to cast a light on all aspects of trafficking including the consumer demand that has caused the criminal activity to increase.
“The goal is to capture the widest audience possible,” Kara said.
The Texas-set film focuses on three girls — from America, Nigeria and India — who are abducted and sold to a Texas brothel, where they plot an escape.
In the film, Archer plays a character who runs a foster care home. Through her work with the organization Artists for Human Rights, she and Kara became friends.
“It has become one of the most lucrative illegal businesses,” Archer says. “Our hope is to educate people about how big it has become.”
More than 3,500 human trafficking cases have been reported in the United States this year — over 3,000 of them women — according to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. Houston has developed a reputation as a hub for trafficking, due in part to its central location along Interstate 10, its large population and the diversity of its community, which can afford those trafficking immigrants greater cover.
Earlier this year, Turner began taking steps to increase victim identification while also raising awareness about trafficking.
“We plan to tackle this issue in a very aggressive sense,” he said Monday.
“Trafficked” was shot in California last year and will open nationwide in early 2017.