Placer County setting for trafficking movie
By Sonaiya Kelley, Los Angeles Times
In one haunting moment from Liongate’s upcoming thriller “Traffik,” a young woman is drugged and loaded into a waiting truck by sex traffickers after having spent much of the night running for her life. Nina Simone’s stirring “Strange Fruit” punctuates the scene, a touch that filmmaker Deon Taylor calls a “spiritual moment” intended to draw a parallel between trafficking and that other institution that commodifies people held against their will.
“I had to put that in there because (trafficking) is the modern-day slavery,” Taylor said.
“Traffik,” which was “shot with a microbudget,” was produced in part by its star Paula Patton’s Third Eye Productions.
The film, which Taylor wrote, directed and produced through his Hidden Empire Film Group, was shot in Northern California’s Placer County, where the director lives with his wife, Roxanne Avent, a producer on the film. The project was inspired by true events.