‘Sold’ is a 12-minute short film written, directed & edited by John Robinson Irwin. The film was chosen out of more than 15,000 submissions to be one of 50 semi-finalists in Ridley Scott’s Youtube Film Festival. We screened the short at more than a dozen film festivals, most recently at the Austin Film Festival. The short won BEST DRAMA at the Malibu and Hollyshorts Film Festivals and a spot edited from the film won the highly competitive MTV contest to raise awareness for human trafficking on television and with MTV’s global concert campaign.
Human trafficking is not a hot topic of conversation or commonly discussed social issue. Yet, it’s the third most profitable crime in the world (just behind drugs and gun sales), providing around $30 Billion in revenue, worldwide. This is not just a foreign epidemic – in the U.S. alone, there are an estimated 100,000 children in the sex trade.
The short features Fernanda Romero (Without Men, The Eye), Maria Elena Laas (Vida, Warrior), Hector Jimenez (Sin Nombre, Nacho Libre), Jesse Garcia (Narcos, Quinceanera), Andrew Keegan (10 Things I Hate About You, O, Independence Day)
