God is still communicating with people through dreams. Just ask filmmaker Christopher Bessette, who risked his career and his personal safety to capture the evil of sex trafficking on video after he had a prophetic dream highlighting a yellow map of Cambodia.
The dream spurred Bessette to produce a Hollywood-grade, feature-length film starring Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino and My Best Friend’s Wedding actor Dermot Mulroney.
This film, Trade of Innocents, will debut this week at the 32nd annual Breckenridge Festival of Film, a nationally recognized event to celebrate independent filmmakers.
Trade of Innocents is a story of hope, reconciliation and redemption. More than the typical “hero saves the day” story, the film reveals the everyday reality of rescuing girls from the horrors of the sex trade. It’s a tale of God’s love.
The story behind the film reveals how the Holy Spirit works to guide and connect people with undeniable confirmations along the way. Bessette calls them “God moments.”
After going undercover in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia, to videotape the sex-trade scene, including a disturbing “date” between a 60-year-old Caucasian man and an 8-year-old Cambodian girl in a restaurant, Bessette spent months negotiating a deal to make a movie based on his research in southeast Asia.
However, just before he was supposed to call the producers to seal the movie deal, God told him not to call them.
Although it meant giving up his plan and walking away from the financing to make the movie, Bessette obeyed God.
Then he had a dream that very night.
In his dream he saw a man whom he identified as a “producer.” Then he saw a yellow map of Cambodia. On the bottom of the map was a clock.
Bessette explains, “I thought in my dream that I can’t tell the time. But God answered, ‘Now is the time.'”
He woke up asking himself what it means. He was puzzled. He didn’t know exactly where to turn, except to God.
Soon afterward, in what seemed like a coincidence that proved to a divine connection, Bessette contacted a Christian married couple named Bill and Laurie Bolthouse. The couple had been recently exposed to the ugly truth of child sex trafficking during their own trip to Cambodia.
As committed supporters of causes focused on “justice,” the Bolthouses felt compelled to do something to help draw attention to the injustice of human trafficking. At first, they didn’t know exactly what to do. They didn’t know who Christopher Bessette was. But they trusted God to guide them.
Based on a friend’s referral, Bessette reached out to the Bolthouses. In a letter penned in 2009, he explained the story he felt God had given him and how he wanted to make a film on sex trafficking.
The Bolthouses prayed about it and finally agreed to help produce the film about the illicit trade of innocent children.
The true confirmation of the collaboration came, however, when Bessette told Bill months later about the dream with the yellow map of Cambodia.
Bolthouse promptly reached up above his computer and unfolded a map he had purchased while in Phnom Pehn. It was a yellow map of Cambodia.
“That’s the map of my dream,” says Bessette.
This was a “God moment” for him.
He then knew he was working with the right “producer” for the film.
Less than two years later, the film was completed on time and under budget.
Following its debut at the film festival this week, Trade of Innocents is expected to be shown in movie theaters across the United States in late 2012 and early 2013.
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