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For the almost 18,000 men, women and children trafficked into the United States yearly and sold as sex workers or forced laborers — in addition to the estimated 50,000 U.S.-born sex slaves — America is not the land of the free. And one of the most notorious areas for slave trafficking is Southern California. Police have found women imprisoned in local massage parlors, forced to service male customers. In the past year, officers have raided apartments from Fullerton to Dana Point, finding neighborhood brothels operating as part of widespread prostitution rings.
After watching a documentary on global sex and labor trafficking, Brandon Marx, a Biola film student, decided to direct a film exposing these crimes. Hannah Roberts, a Biola screenwriting student, introduced Marx to a woman named Aly, whose father had helped form a brothel in Southern California where he pimped out Aly and her sisters. Shockingly, Aly’s charismatic father was a successful businessman and an elder in his local church.
“If this can happen under our noses,” says Marx, “then we have to do something about it.”
Marx’s narrative film and accompanying documentary, Land of the Free, developed out of interviews with Aly. Roberts wrote the script, which juxtaposes Angelina — a Mexican girl who is kidnapped and forced into prostitution — and Micalea — a white, middle-class barista at a small coffee shop, who is lent to paying customers by her father. The film unabashedly portrays the horrors of the slave and sex trafficking industries.
“We are tackling a really hard issue,” says Kat Fredericks, the film’s co-producer. “Our point isn’t to show evil or violence for its own sake, but to shed light on the darkness.”
In many ways, this is not a typical Christian movie. There is no conversion scene, and the ending leaves audiences wondering whether the girls escape. Actor Andy Burso, who plays a slave trafficker, did not expect Christian university students to explore the seedy subject of sex slavery.
“I thought it was really interesting and really gutsy,” he said. “This film is not safe at all.”
Land of the Free captures the horrific reality of the hidden world of sex trafficking. Many slaves die before they can escape or buy their freedom.
“I don’t really care if Christians are shock