Hardcore

Felicity, a 25-year-old single mother living in England, is desperate to make money to improve her daughter’s opportunities. She is invited by a porn agent to travel to Los Angeles, the centre of the porn industry, to make a career as a pornstar. Hardcore follows Felicity over three weeks, as she ends up immersed in the deeply disturbing and degrading world of pornography production. Her agent introduces her to Max Hardcore, a notorious abuser, known for humiliating and abusing women for films. Aware of his reputation for choking women—and that he often asks women to dress as underage girls—Felicity does not want to meet him, let alone work with him, yet she is pressured by her agent until she agrees. When Max Hardcore chokes her, and she breaks down in tears, he attempts to manipulate her into continuing, and is almost persuaded until the documentary crew steps in for fear of being complicit in rape. The documentary is extremely difficult viewing, but depicts a true face of the porn industry, and the toxic culture it is embedded in.