First Teaser For David Pablos' THE CHOSEN ONES: Female Trafficking As A Tradition

After being recognized for his short film La Canción de los Niños Muertos (2008) and his debut feature length feature The Life After (2013) - dramas about guilt and forgiveness, which narrate fraternal confrontations from the mother's absence and a significant death that irremediably mutate the characters' personality - Mexican filmmaker David Pablos returns with The Chosen Ones (Las Elegidas).

Inspired by Jorge Volpi's novel of the same name - which will be published soon and describes how in Tenancingo, Tlaxcala (a quintessential sexist Mexican town) the practice of female trafficking is inherited like any other tradition - the film takes the action to Tijuana and tells the love story between Ulises and Sofía, a relationship that is altered when Ulises' father Marcos, who is involved in prostitution, force him to enter to the business of the family. Eventually, Sofía will be his first victim.

Even with this premise and setting (a city that has been stigmatized like no other, and where the director grew up), Pablos insists that his intention "is not to make a sordid movie but rather an intimate portrait of a complex subject."

Backed by executive producers Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, The Chosen Ones is one of the eighteen titles from Cannes' 2015 Un Certain Regard selection, which also features auteurs like Apicatpong Weerasethakul, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Brillante Mendoza and Corneliu Porumboiu.

(Translation from Spanish to English by Eric Ortiz Garcia.)