Trade - Welcome to America
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Trade - Welcome to America |
| Original title | Trade |
| Country of production | USA , Germany |
| original language | English , Spanish , Polish , Russian |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 119 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 16 JMK 14 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Marco Kreuzpaintner |
| script |
Peter Landesman (story) José Rivera (plot and screenplay) |
| production |
Roland Emmerich Rosilyn Heller |
| music | Jacabo Lieberman |
| camera | Daniel Gottschalk |
| cut | Hansjörg Weißbrich |
| occupation | |
| |
Trade - Willkommen in Amerika ( Trade ) is a German-American feature film from 2007 in which u. a. Kevin Kline participates. The film was produced by Roland Emmerich and Rosilyn Heller and directed by Marco Kreuzpaintner . The film was first shown on January 23, 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival and was shown in the United States on September 28, 2007 in selected cinemas. The cinema release in Germany took place on October 18th. The film deals with the topics of modern slavery , sex slavery, forced prostitution and international human trafficking .
In Germany, the film was shown at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the presence of director Marco Kreuzpaintner and producer Roland Emmerich on October 12, 2007 and was awarded the Hessian Film Prize in the Cinema for Peace Special Award category.
action
In Mexico City , 13-year-old Adriana, who lives with her siblings and mother in a poor neighborhood, is kidnapped by human traffickers on the street. She is said to be smuggled into the United States with some other children from Mexico as well as a little Thai boy and the young Polish girl Veronica, who came through an employment agency, and sold there as a sex slave. The kidnappers rape the Polish woman in front of the other children in order to break their will. However, they do nothing to the other kidnapped girls in order to later sell them as virgins; this increases their value in human trafficking.
Jorge, Adriana's 17-year-old brother, who makes a living from robbing sex tourists with two friends, is looking for his sister and tracks down the traffickers. He follows them in a stolen car to a small town near the US border, where he runs out of gas and loses track of them.
The kidnappers try to bring their victims illegally across the border, which only succeeds on the second attempt. Because the first time the group is caught by the American border police and taken to a reception center. Before that, the kidnappers intimidated the kidnappers with threats against their families. The police also refuse to believe that they have been kidnapped. As a result, they are brought back to Mexico, where the kidnappers are already waiting for them.
Jorge also wants to go to the USA. He learned from a mafia boss in Mexico City that the child trafficking ring operates out of New Jersey . To get across the border, he hides in the trunk of an American car. It turns out that the car belongs to police officer Ray Sheridan of all people. Towards the end of the film it becomes clear that Ray had an illegitimate daughter who was initially unknown to him. Her mother apparently sold it to human traffickers to finance her drug addiction. That's why Ray, who usually works in the fraud department, stayed at the place in Mexico where Jorge was hiding in his car. At first Ray has doubts about Jorge's story, but Jorge can finally convince him of the kidnapping of his sister. That's why they both go to New Jersey together.
In fact, that is the goal of the gangsters. On the way there, they earn additional money by forcing Adriana and Veronica to prostitution at motorway service stations , whereby Adriana is only available for oral sex, as she is supposed to be sold virgin. Adriana and Veronica flee on the way. The young Polish woman calls her mother on a public phone on a street and learns that the human traffickers have taken her young son. During this phone call, the two are discovered by the gangsters and dragged back into their car. They drive into the mountains above the city. One of the human traffickers prepares to punish Veronica for escaping by hitting her with his belt. But she throws herself down a rock to her death.
Arrived in New Jersey, Ray turns to the local police, who, although they are watching the gang's operations center, do not want to take any action in order not to jeopardize the investigation into the entire network. Jorge discovers an online auction where his 13-year-old sister Adriana is up for sale. In consultation with Jorge, Ray bids under an alias, at $ 32,000 he gets the bid.
However, the handover does not go as planned because the traffickers are suspicious. Ray has to hand over the money and get into the gang's car. Before he changes he pulls the trunk lever of his car unnoticed. He also leaves the key in the ignition. When the gangsters drive away with Ray, Jorge jumps out of the trunk, takes a seat behind the wheel and takes up the chase.
When Ray enters the house, he meets Laura, a young woman who works as a human trafficking broker. The woman has big green eyes, like his supposed daughter in the photos he shows Jorge during a confidential conversation in a motel during a stopover. The woman also looks very similar to the child's mother, Alma.
In order to prove he is not a cop, Ray is asked to deflower Adriana in a bedroom at the gang house . Alone with the scared 13-year-old, he explains to her that he is a friend of her brother Jorge. Adriana goes into the bathroom, where she inflicts a small wound. She dripped several drops of blood on the bed sheet to give the impression that she was actually deflowered by Ray. However, one of the human traffickers catches the two of them doing their thing. Just as he is about to tell his accomplice about the deception, Adriana reminds him that Veronica's eyes are watching him and that it is not too late to make everything right. Taken by these words, he turns away and covers the two of them so they can leave.
When Ray and Adriana leave the house, Jorge falls on one of the gangsters with a crowbar and knocks him down. But the leader of the gang pulls a gun. A few seconds later, a special police unit storms the house and frees many children who were still hidden in the basement.
Whether Laura is actually Ray's missing daughter Carly, who was then sold to human traffickers by her mother, is not confirmed. But Ray seems to have got his answers, since he too lets his search rest.
Ray plans to give the $ 32,000 to Jorge and Adriana. Jorge initially accepts the money, but then puts it in Ray's car unnoticed. Jorge and Adriana return to his mother in Mexico City. The film ends with Jorge stabbing the man who was responsible for the kidnapping with a knife and leaving him on the street. The last shot shows Jorge, who turns around in shock when a little boy runs crying to his dead father, the human trafficker who has just been stabbed.
background
The film is based on the article "The Girls Next Door" by journalist Peter Landesman, which appeared on January 25, 2004 in the New York Times Magazine . The article (and specifically the number of "perhaps tens of thousands" of girls, women and boys being held as sex slaves against their will in the US) was heavily criticized on the same day by blogger Daniel Radosh, whereupon Landesman threatened legal action . A series of articles by Jack Shafer in Slate explored the controversy and facts of the article, as well as the legal status and responsibility of blogs .
Reviews
The reviews of Trade have been mixed. The lexicon of the international film judges: “ A film about terrifying conditions, which does not sound out its topic and remains too much on the surface. "
The film critic Welf Lindner also writes: " Social or political aspects that could have shed more light on the subject of human slavery are largely abandoned in favor of a simplifying and emotionalizing genre mix of thriller and melodrama elements, " and points out the sometimes incoherent narrative and the lack of authenticity down. The film received 7.5 out of 10 possible points in the IMDB , but was only rated 42 out of 100 in the critics' mirror.
Awards
- 2007: Hessian Film Prize in the Cinema for Peace Special Award category
- 2008: German Film Award in the Best Sound Design category
- The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.
Web links
- Trade - Welcome to America in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Official site ( English version )
- Trade - Welcome to America atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- Trade - Welcome to America at Metacritic (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate (PDF; 73 kB) of the FSK
- ↑ Age rating for Trade - Welcome to America . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ - ( Memento of the original from October 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Summary at http://www.radosh.net/archive/2004_01_01_radosh_archive.html#000061
- ↑ Series of articles on the controversy in Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2094646/
- ^ Journal film-dienst and Catholic Film Commission for Germany (eds.), Horst Peter Koll and Hans Messias (ed.): Lexikon des Internationale Films - Filmjahr 2007 . Schüren Verlag, Marburg 2008. ISBN 978-3-89472-624-9
- ↑ movie review Welf Lindner on www.critic.de. Retrieved August 30, 2011 .
- ↑ Trade - Welcome to America in the Internet Movie Database (English)
