GRAND FORKS HERALD

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.

โ€œTrappedโ€ 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, โ€œBefore They Vanish.โ€ They were customers in a convenience store. โ€œShe was barefoot,โ€ recalled Khan, who was filming at a ranch near Linton. โ€œIt was sometime in April or May โ€” not cold weather, maybe 50s or 60s.โ€

He offered to buy her coffee. โ€œWe started talking,โ€ he said. She asked what he was doing there; later she showed up on his set, and was a โ€œvery respectfulโ€ observer, he said. They continued to talk. He asked what she wanted to do with her life. โ€œShe was probably in her mid-20s,โ€ Khan said. โ€œShe 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. โ€œShe thought this was normal until she grew up,โ€ Khan said. โ€œWhen 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. โ€œShe got into a big, big, big mess,โ€ Khan said. โ€œBut she (got) herself out of it; she ran away โ€ฆ and now sheโ€™s trying to put her life together.โ€

The woman wishes to remain anonymous, he said. Khan found her story โ€œfascinating,โ€ he said, and it became the inspiration for โ€œTrapped,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. โ€œI have met amazing people (in North Dakota) โ€“ people who are very warm, very different from New York,โ€ Khan said. โ€œNew York is a very driven place.โ€

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Grand Forks Herald

โ€œTrappedโ€ 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”

Follow film production at IMDB

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@ejazkhancinema #trappedthemovie

TRAPPED MOVIE TEASER