GRAND FORKS HERALD
By Pamela Knudson of Grand Forks Herald
It was a chance encounter in a convenience store in rural North Dakota that eventually led an East Coast filmmaker to make a movie about sexual abuse and sex trafficking in this state.
Ejaz Khan, a filmmaker, conservationist, and photographer based in New York City, plans to begin filming that movie Wednesday, March 1, in Linton, he said.
โTrappedโ is based on the story of a young woman, who, as a teenager, ran away from home to escape abuse, only to fall under the control of sex traffickers in Bismarck.
Khan met the woman a few years ago while making his first feature film in North Dakota, โBefore They Vanish.โ They were customers in a convenience store. โShe was barefoot,โ recalled Khan, who was filming at a ranch near Linton. โIt was sometime in April or May โ not cold weather, maybe 50s or 60s.โ
He offered to buy her coffee. โWe started talking,โ he said. She asked what he was doing there; later she showed up on his set, and was a โvery respectfulโ observer, he said. They continued to talk. He asked what she wanted to do with her life. โShe was probably in her mid-20s,โ Khan said. โShe gave me the story of her life.โ
As she was growing up, she told him, her alcoholic, drug-using mother would bring boyfriends home; one of them raped her. โShe thought this was normal until she grew up,โ Khan said. โWhen she realized it was wrong, she ran away from home, and fell into the hands of sex traffickers (who) took her around for six years, and they sold her. โShe got into a big, big, big mess,โ Khan said. โBut she (got) herself out of it; she ran away โฆ and now sheโs trying to put her life together.โ
The woman wishes to remain anonymous, he said. Khan found her story โfascinating,โ he said, and it became the inspiration for โTrapped,โ a fictional narrative film about sex abuse and sex trafficking in a small town in North Dakota.
Most of the actors in his two North Dakota films live in the Linton area; the locals are not experienced actors, he said. The few professional actors in the films are from New York. โI have met amazing people (in North Dakota) โ people who are very warm, very different from New York,โ Khan said. โNew York is a very driven place.โ
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โTrappedโ is an upcoming feature film that tells the story of a fragile relationship between a mother and daughter set in a small town of Linton, North Dakota.
A film by Ejaz Khan, director of “Before They Vanish”
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