Selling Isobel (2016)

AKA: Apartment 407
Directed by: Rudolf Buitendach
Starring: Frida Farrell (Isobel), Gabriel Olds (Peter), Matthew Marsden (Mark), Amber Benson (Chloe), Lew Temple (Tramp)
Country: United States
Language: English (Optional Eng Subs)
Runtime: 01:41:44
Genres: Based on a True Story, Rape-Sexual-Violence against Women, Human Trafficking-Prostitution, Captivity

Plot – Spoilers:
A fitness instructor Isobel is approached by a man at a cafe who offers her a modelling job. It’s half a day’s work, the money is tempting and Isobel who’s a young mom is frankly flattered. As you might expect with a movie on this site, the modeling job turns out to be bait and Isobel finds herself held captive and prostituted.

Selling Isobel isn’t as grim as several others on here and even includes some seemingly ludicrous situations. But what makes it fairly unique is that it’s based on the experiences of lead actress Frida Farrell. As a young Swedish actress-student in London during the mid-’00s, she was held captive in a flat for a few days and trafficked. In her case, she escaped when her captor left the door open just before the ‘special client’ came in.

In her own words from an interview with Cosmopolitan:
“I felt so embarrassed afterwards that at first, I didn’t want to tell anyone. It took me four days to contact the police. Although 14 years doesn’t sound like much, back then police didn’t seem to take crimes like this as seriously as they would now. The officers asked me how I got to the flat in the first place, if anyone had forced me in, and when I told them I’d walked in on my own it was almost as if they couldn’t take me seriously.

They didn’t say as much, but it felt like they thought it was my own fault for going there in the first place. I was so humiliated that I left the police station.

I don’t know if Peter has ever been caught. The police said the apartment was rented by the week, that his fingerprints didn’t match any in the system, and that his phone number was attached to a pay as you go sim card that had been shut down. His website was traced back to Eastern Europe but they couldn’t locate him, so that was pretty much it. There were no more avenues to explore.”