'Trafficked' Host Mariana van Zeller On If Journalism Is As Bad as I Think It Is
The investigative journalist also discusses the joys of celebrating five years of her critically acclaimed (and fantastic) NatGeo series.

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Investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller has stared down the barrel of machine guns to interrogate cartel leaders and has talked to people bilking others of thousands of dollars, capturing it all on camera for her National Geographic series Trafficked. But five years since its start van Zellar is still able to be surprised. In the first episode of the new season of Trafficked, which premiered Saturday, van Zeller hears a harrowing story about a woman killed for being a drug mule right in small-town America. “They cut off her fingers,” van Zeller tells The Film Maven. “This is in the United States, in small town America. They cut off her fingers and they chopped her up with a chainsaw while she was still alive. This is happening, again, in small town America. That is that was shocking to me.”