‘Paradise Highway’ puts a spotlight on female truck drivers and their everyday realities

Playing truck driver Sally, Juliette Binoche crosses state lines while carrying illicit cargo in ‘Paradise Highway’ now streaming on Lionsgate Play

 

Drive down the perilous roads of the riveting thriller Paradise Highway as two ladies reluctantly find themselves in the seamy depths of human trafficking. After her brother’s life is threatened, truck driver Sally (Juliette Binoche, The English Patient, Certified Copy) is forced to enter the unsavoury world of human trafficking and smuggle a girl named Leila (Hala Finley, Back Roads, Unplugging). While Sally and Leila attempt to cross state lines undetected, world-weary FBI agent Gerick (Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby, The Shawshank Redemption) leads his boyish, by-the-book partner Finley Sterling (Cameron Monaghan, Shattered) to chase after them, hoping to bring down the human trafficking operation once and for all and bring Sally and Leila safely back home. 

Talking about the overarching theme of the film and what inspired her script, director and scriptwriter Anna Gutto says: “Paradise Highway is a film about the power of human connection – about the damage that can be done when children are disconnected from the rest of society, and about the goodness that can prevail when it is rekindled.… As a teenager, I was exposed to the reality of trafficking in my own home town. I was overwhelmed by the disconnect – there was physical proximity, but no human bond between my world and theirs. I realized children my age and younger lived in slavery right under my nose.”

While writing the script, Gutto shares that she had much to thank for in real-life female truck driver Desiree Wood, who also plays the role of Pattie in the movie. In fact, Gutto and Binoche gained first-hand experience of what a trucker’s life was like by joining Wood on her job. Of the experience, Gutto says: “Being on the road with her during the day, sleeping in the bunk at night, seeing the world of the truck stops, the world of waiting, the world of delivering, picking up cargo. It’s been incredibly important for writing the script and for understanding the world.”

Follow the tracks left behind by Sally and Leila in Paradise Highway streaming on Lionsgate Play.