A film directed by Will Wallace, Trafficked, is at the centre of a debate over the propriety of the casting process.

The movie, which was produced by Conroy Kanter and Siddharth Kara, tells the story of the modern s** trade.

During a small audition callback session, a group of actresses were asked to simulate a brothel scene, with male actors acting alternately as slave owners and brothel clients and replicating harassment and assault, within certain limits.

Actress Sanchita Malik subsequently reported the incident to the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, and later filed a grievance.

Producers Conroy Kanter and Siddharth Kara describe Malik’s allegations as “deeply distressing” but deny that the session was as extreme as Malik claims.

Several other actresses who participated in the session have also complained about the violence of the exercise, but did not witness the simulated rape described by Malik.

The exercise was held at a Hollywood rehearsal space on May 20, 2015.

Malik claims that she was surprised to learn that she would be participating in an extended exercise in which male counterparts would be coached to replicate harassment and assault.

She alleges that the scenario involved her hair being pulled, her neck being licked, her body being pushed against a wall and a fellow actor simulating rape by “pretending to force his p-nis in me”.

According to Malik, the actor “was making grunting sounds and I was just crying and laying there”.

Malik says that she subsequently suffered from chronic panic attacks which required therapy.

Wallace, who was removed from the project during post-production over a disagreement involving the depiction of rape, defended the legitimacy of his process, stating: “Sometimes actresses need something physical, something that intense into their mind.” Four other actresses who took part in the audition also spoke to The Hollywood Reporter.

All four agreed that the exercise was needlessly violent and that they themselves had been bruised.

They said that they had felt blindsided by the verisimilitude of the violence and had been euphemistically told in advance by Wallace and his associates that they would need to be prepared to “push” and “challenge” themselves.

None of them felt comfortable using the safe word (“Will”) as it would have disrupted colleagues who were competing for roles.

Trafficked was given a limited theatrical release and received poor reviews.

The Los Angeles Times described the film as “unnecessarily eroticised”.

The film’s producers have denied that the casting process was inappropriate.

However, they are at odds with Malik over what happened after the audition.

They claim that Malik was an overly assertive networker who seemed fine following the exercise and that she allegedly had enough presence of mind to corner Conroy Kanter into an amiable post-session chat about the production’s intended shooting schedule over a beverage and snack.

Malik, however, claims that Kanter and Kara’s wife saw her seated in a state of shock and kindly offered to talk with her at a nearby cafe while she calmed down.

The actresses assert that the exercise was captured on video, a claim which Wallace affirms.

However, when The Hollywood Reporter requested the footage for review, the producers denied any knowledge of its existence.

Attendees were surprised to learn that what they believed to be private “reflection letters” were later shared by producers with The Hollywood Reporter.

The letters had been solicited by Wallace shortly afterwards and contained intimate correspondence that at times revealed the actresses’ own histories of s**ual trauma.

Despite the fact that the purpose of the day was to audition candidates, neither of the two casting directors, who included Wallace’s wife, Sara, attended.

Kanter and Kara are at pains to stress the importance of their anti-trafficking work.

Kara, who is a Harvard lecturer and author of 2009’s s** Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, claims that “I can say with certainty that I do not believe any…lines were crossed in the acting session”.

Malik is insistent that the audition process was inappropriate.

She says: “This is about how the audition was run.

“We actors did not need to go through what we went through to understand how trafficked victims feel.