GRAND FORKS — It was an opportunity encounter in a comfort retailer in rural North Dakota that ultimately led an East Coast filmmaker to make a film about sexual abuse and sex-trafficking on this state.

Ejaz Khan, a filmmaker, conservationist and photographer based mostly in New York Metropolis, plans to start filming that film Wednesday, March 1, in Linton, he mentioned.

“Trapped” is predicated on the story of a younger lady, who, as an adolescent, ran away from house to flee abuse, solely to fall below the management of intercourse traffickers in Bismarck.

Khan met the girl a couple of years in the past whereas making his first function movie in North Dakota, “Earlier than They Vanish.” They had been prospects in a comfort retailer.

“She was barefoot,” recalled Khan, who was filming at a ranch close to Linton. “It was someday in April or Might — not chilly climate, perhaps 50s or 60s.” He provided to purchase her espresso.

“We began speaking,” he mentioned. She requested what he was doing there; later she confirmed up on his set, and was a “very respectful” observer, he mentioned. They continued to speak. He requested what she wished to do along with her life.

“She was most likely in her mid-20s,” Khan mentioned. “She gave me the story of her life.”

As she was rising up, she advised him, her alcoholic, drug-using mom would deliver boyfriends house; one in all them raped her.

“She thought this was regular, till she grew up,” Khan mentioned. “When she realized it was flawed, she ran away from house, and fell into the arms of intercourse traffickers (who) took her round for six years, they usually offered her.

“She acquired into an enormous, huge, huge mess,” Khan mentioned. “However she (acquired) herself out of it; she ran away … and now she’s making an attempt to place her life collectively.”

The lady needs to stay nameless, he mentioned.

Khan discovered her story “fascinating,” he mentioned, and it turned the inspiration for “Trapped,” a fictional narrative movie about intercourse abuse and intercourse trafficking in a small city in North Dakota.

Many of the actors in his two North Dakota movies stay within the Linton space; the locals are usually not skilled actors, he mentioned. The few skilled actors within the movies are from New York.

“I’ve met superb folks (in North Dakota) – people who find themselves very heat, very totally different from New York,” Khan mentioned. “New York is a really pushed place.”

In his early 20s, Khan left his native India to pursue a profession as a trend photographer in New York. He later branched into wildlife images, specializing in the great thing about animals, particularly endangered wildlife and horses, and the environmental adjustments they face.

Khan has traveled to “excessive environments” – similar to Alaska and the North Pole, in response to his web site – to {photograph} and convey again wonderful artwork photos for art-lovers to show and luxuriate in at house. He has additionally traveled to France to {photograph} horses on ranches that his buddies personal.

Khan displays and sells photos of wildlife – together with wolves, horses and birds – in his New York gallery, and donates a portion of the proceeds to horse-ranchers or foundations that help the notice and conservation of wildlife, he mentioned.

Just a few years in the past, throughout an artwork opening in his gallery, a girl approached him, saying she had heard that he “donates to the folks in France,” he mentioned. “And I mentioned, yeah, as a result of that’s the place the horses are.

“And he or she will get somewhat upset about it,” he recalled. The lady, who lives on Lengthy Island, requested, “Why are you giving cash to France? Why can’t you give cash to our personal horses over right here in America? We’d like the cash right here too.”

“(She) turned out to be an enormous horse advocate,” who ran a basis devoted to their welfare, Khan mentioned. She put him in contact with the proprietor of a big herd of horses in North Dakota — Frank Kuntz of Linton. From there, one factor led to a different.

Kuntz ultimately signed on to look in Khan’s first movie, “Earlier than They Vanish,” as did Paul Silbernagel, of Bismarck, proprietor of the farm the place Kuntz shelters 300 horses. Members of Silvernagel’s household additionally seem within the movie. Paul’s spouse, Barb Silbernagel, a retired English instructor, helped write the script for “Earlier than They Vanish,” a drama a couple of veteran who’s dying from most cancers on account of publicity to Agent Orange in Vietnam. The veteran is combating the query of what’s going to occur to his horses after he dies.

Barb Silbernagel additionally helped write the script for “Trapped,” the filming for which needs to be accomplished by the tip of March, Khan mentioned. He expects the two-hour movie will premiere in Bismarck in December, with a second premiere in New York.

Khan plans to provide away a three-day journey to New York for the premiere. To enter the drawing for the journey, register at his web site,

www.ejazkhanphotography.com

. The winner might be notified by e mail.

Khan hopes “Trapped” will increase public consciousness about sex-trafficking in North Dakota, he mentioned. “It’s right here. It occurs, not simply in North Dakota; it occurs in America. That is our house, and we wish to put issues beneath the rug and say it’s not taking place right here, it solely occurs in Third World international locations, however that’s not true. It occurs right here.”

Khan has interviewed 82 women “who’ve both gone by way of or nonetheless are within the trafficking enterprise,” he mentioned. One widespread thread runs by way of all of the tales of ladies who had been raped at an early age.

“I interviewed a lady who was 11 years outdated when she was raped – by her personal father, by the way in which. She thought it was regular; she thought that that’s what fathers do, till she grew up and came upon that was not what father’s do,” he mentioned. “Are you able to think about that?”

In interviews with women and girls who’re victims of sex-trafficking, Khan discovered that fifty% had been sexually abused earlier in life, he mentioned.

Khan desires “Trapped” to encourage “extra of an open dialog in households – extra so than colleges, I imagine – which is able to make the kid somewhat extra open to speaking with their dad and mom,” he mentioned.

“The higher query for the viewers is, how can they cease this,” he mentioned. His aim in making the movie “Trapped” is easy.

“If one lady doesn’t run away from house and stays in her home and speaks to her mother or speaks to her dad or speaks to somebody who’s good to her as an alternative of operating away,” he mentioned, “I’d really feel very profitable.”