Brutality of child slavery in SOLD – Linklater recreates fun of ’80 in ‘Everybody’

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NEW YORK, April 2, (Agencies): When actress Gillian Anderson chose to appear in a new movie about a Nepali girl who is unwittingly sold by her impoverished parents to an Indian brothel, her decision had nothing to do with the part, she says.

Rather she was drawn to what the film, “SOLD”, which opens in New York this week reveals — the exploitation of millions of girls who are sold into slavery around the world.

“It’s not the role. It’s got to do with the campaign,” the American actress told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The film juxtaposes breathtaking scenery shots of the Himalayas with gruesome images of violence and degradation in the brothel and slum where the girl, named Lakshmi, and others are held captive.

Anderson, known best for her role as Agent Dana Scully in the popular US television series “The X-Files,” plays a photographer who joins forces with an activist group trying to rescue the enslaved women and children.

Afflicted

Anderson, 47, has been involved in a number of charities, from Neurofibromatosis Inc that supports research into a genetic disorder that afflicted her brother to SA-YES that mentors youth in South Africa.

But the issue of child trafficking has risen to the top of her list, she said during a recent media junket promoting the film in New York.

“It’s always important to choose the causes that break our hearts and this, the thought of children being trafficked, breaks my heart,” she said. “So I feel quite empowered and impassioned.”

Globally, nearly 21 million people are victims of human trafficking, a $150 billion industry, according to the United Nation’s International Labour Organization.

Of that total, an estimated 4.5 million people are forced into sex work. Children are estimated to comprise 5.5 million of the overall victims, according to the ILO.

“It is so disturbing and so ugly, but what’s important is that it is in our face so that we are moved to action,” Anderson said.

“SOLD” is backed by a campaign called TaughtNotTrafficked which aims to raise awareness of trafficking, support survivors and lobby for government and policy changes in partnership with advocacy groups worldwide.

“The movement behind the film is bigger than the film itself,” she said.

While in limited theatrical release, the 97-minute film can be screened on request through a company listed on the website SOLDtheMovie.com. Such on-demand showings allow people to arrange screenings in markets where it otherwise might not play.

Graphic scenes in the full-length version depict beatings and abuse. But a shorter version suitable to be shown in schools also is available.

“The power of the film is that it has those scenes because that is the reality of what happens,” Anderson said.

“It’s a very difficult movie,” she said. “It’s a difficult subject matter to talk about children being systematically raped but we need to get past that.”

“SOLD” was directed by Jeffrey D. Brown, who won an Academy Award in 1986 for the short film “Molly’s Pilgrim”, and features Indian actress Niyar Saikia as Lakshmi.

Emma Thompson, awarded an Oscar for Best Actress in 1993 for her role in “Howards End,” was executive producer.

Director Richard Linklater remembers the year 1980 as a breezy, fun and raunchy time. It was also the end of an era — the last gasp of the “utter hedonistic abandonment” of the 1970s before the conservative cultural backlash of the new decade was to take hold.

But the college freshman of his latest film “Everybody Wants Some!!” didn’t know that. The draft was long over. “Just Say No” hadn’t yet been introduced. In the fall of 1980 at a small Texas college, everything was still a party — especially in the long weekend before classes start.

And it’s in that concentrated, heightened weekend that Linklater chose to set the film, which follows the bro philosophers of the college baseball team around as they mine every bit of fun out of those precious, responsibility-free days with sex, drugs, alcohol and everything in between. The film, now playing in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide in the coming weeks.

In movie time, “Everybody Wants Some!!” is set only four years after its predecessor, Linklater’s last day of high school cult classic “Dazed and Confused.” In real time, 23 years separate the two semi-autobiographical films.

Those two decades didn’t really change how Linklater felt about that period in his life, though.

Running

“It’s like running into an old friend who you haven’t seen in a while. The conversation picks up right there,” Linklater said.

The 55-year-old “Boyhood” director was mainly struck by how much younger the cast was than him now — and how the idea of asking a girl to dance at a disco was just not in the cultural vocabulary of his millennial actors. As in “Dazed and Confused” and its then-unknown cast of now notables like Matthew McConaughey, Linklater populated this cast with under the radar actors like Blake Jenner, Wyatt Russell, Ryan Guzman and Tyler Hoechlin.

Linklater drew on both people he knew and many of his experiences to craft the characters and situations. Without spoiling the fun of discovery, let’s just say that some of it is not too far removed from the antics of “Animal House” and other college comedies.

“Almost all of it really happened in some way or another,” Linklater said.

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