"I have definitely seen cases where you see someone at Cannes in May, then you're in L.A. in September, and they're there," says one producer who has witnessed the gambit.
In fact, the producer says it should raise a red flag any time you see a foreign-born actress with no credits suddenly make her way into a U.S.-shot movie. "No one would legitimately pay for the H-1 visa for that kind of role. No way. It costs four or five thousand bucks," he says. "As a producer, there's no chance that there's this one-liner that should be a local hire [and] that we're going to go with a first-timer from Ukraine and get a work visa for her."
And yet, it happens with disturbing frequency, with the Cannes Film Festival playing a pivotal role. THR has learned of at least one now-prominent actress who made her first connections on a Cannes yacht and quickly landed her debut role in a U.S.-shot movie. In exchange, she told confidants, she was passed around to a group of Hollywood men, sometimes coerced. Another name actress has a nearly identical trajectory. Both declined to speak to THR.
How the young women wind up in Cannes in the first place is a bit of a mystery given the price of travel and accommodations during the festival. But a source familiar with the inner workings of yacht life says services that pay to bring women to such places are particularly reliant on Eastern Europeans and will groom them in their home countries before moving them to high-profile events. Girls who have received refinement training — so they will blend in at premieres and posh restaurants — typically fetch more for the service. As to who is paying, well-heeled film financiers often are footing the bill. One London-based woman who previously ran such a service was known by producers as a point person for the scheme but declined to talk to THR, fearful of being on the record.
"It's important to point out that to be trafficked, you don't have to be locked up somewhere," says Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA, which works with victims of human trafficking. "The fact that people have freedom of movement, that's not relevant. The question is: Is there a level of coercion? In the trafficking of foreign nationals, the methods of coercion are often very different from the trafficking of U.S. citizens because the immigration system is designed in such a way as to give all power to the employer."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/cannes-has-a-sex-trafficking-problem-metoo-era-1208261