By Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/4/23 – An estimated 27.6 million people are victims of vicious crimes of human trafficking; many causes have attempted to spread awareness to end its societal crushing effects. Director Nick Laurant, writers Kika Magalhães, and Chris Marrone have collectively brought this awareness to the big screen illustrating a young woman’s life-threatening experience of being trafficked.
There are many tactics that traffickers utilize to conquer and control. The most common method brilliantly depicted in Girl in the Backseat was the use of kindness from the abuser to their victim. Star and co-writer of the film, Magalhães explained to THT during their interview, “[Kindness] is a technique that traffickers use; they pretend that they’re nice to their victims. It’s a strategy that they have to ‘work’ victims; sometimes girls believe that their capturer is their boyfriend.” The repulsive technique is shown smartly throughout the film to really capture how easily these acts of violence can happen and to highlight the precautions one can take to avoid trafficking and ultimately survive.
Extremely education-forward, The Girl in the Backseat aims to change the trajectory of the horrific status quo of human trafficking. Co-writer Chris Marrone states, “There is an importance to our own lives that a lot of people can grow accustomed to what they think the world is. They might paint this picture in their mind that the world is this sort of Pleasantville bubble with some hardships in realities out there that affect very few people, but in reality, there are 8 billion of us floating on this rock together and there are horrific stories going on affecting millions of human beings. If we can collectively come together as a society and talk about these things more the sooner, we can find a solution or find ways to prevent trafficking from being possible.”
Please check your local movie listings for show times of The Girl in the Backseat.