Sound of Freedom (film)

Sound of Freedom is a 2023 American biographical drama thriller film directed and co-written by Alejandro Monteverde, and starring Jim Caviezel, Mira Sorvino, and Bill Camp. Caviezel plays Tim Ballard, a former U.S. government agent who embarks on a mission to rescue children from sex traffickers in Colombia. It is produced by Eduardo Verástegui, who also plays a role in the film.

The film was released on July 4, 2023, by Angel Studios, grossing $251 million against a $14.5 million budget to become one of the most successful independent films in history. It received mixed reviews from critics, while audience reception was highly positive.

The film attracted considerable attention for its connections to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Plot

In 2013, Roberto Aguilar, a poor father of two from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is approached by a woman called Giselle. She offers to sign his young children, Rocío and Miguel Aguilar, to child modeling contracts. He accepts and takes them to the photoshoot. When he returns to pick up his children, they are gone. It is revealed that the children have been abducted and sold to be used as sex slaves.

In Calexico, California, Tim Ballard is a Special Agent for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), where he arrests people who possess and distribute child pornography. The painful work takes a great toll on his personal life, and this is only worsened when another agent, Chris, points out that despite arresting and prosecuting numerous child predators, they are largely unable to prevent more children from being exploited. Ballard knows this is because most of them are outside the U.S., but Chris' words stick with him. He speaks to a suspect he arrested, Ernst Oshinsky, deceiving the man into believing he is a secret pedophile himself and using quotes from Oshinsky's novel. Once he gains Oshinsky's trust, he sets up a meeting with a trafficked child, prompting Ballard to arrest Oshinsky on child trafficking charges, and is able to arrest Earl Backman, the man who purchased Miguel.

Ballard rescues Miguel and asks him for information that would help him find other missing children. Ballard learns that Miguel's sister Rocío is still missing, and the boy asks him to save her. Ballard arranges for Miguel to return home to Roberto, but not before Miguel gives Ballard his sister's Saint Timothy necklace. Ballard starts looking for Rocío, and his search leads him to Cartagena, Colombia. He meets with Vampiro ("Vampire"), a former Cali Cartel accountant who now works to save children from sex trafficking, and Jorge, a Colombian police officer. They gain information on Giselle, whose real name is Katy Juarez, a former beauty queen.

After reading about a child sex club in Thailand which was shut down, Ballard decides that this is the perfect cover story to acquire a large number of Katy's children in a sting operation. Ballard gets a wealthy citizen named Pablo Delgado to help with the mission, who gets them a hotel they can use. Ballard's supervisor, Frost, orders Ballard to return to the U.S. as he does not have the authority to conduct such an operation on foreign soil. Ballard resigns from his position rather than abandon the search for Rocío.

Sympathizing with Ballard's decision, Frost secretly persuades the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Colombia to assist him however they can. With Jorge acting as a middleman, Ballard, Vampiro, and Delgado pose as sex traffickers and convince Katy to sell them 54 children, enabling the police to identify and arrest her team while dismantling her operation. Rocío is not among the freed youths. Beforehand, Ballard set up the traffickers' lawyer, Carne, to look like a snitch, while they pretend to get detained too.

After interrogating one of Katy's associates, Fuego, and revealing a photo of a dead Carne, unaware of the circumstances of Carne's death, Fuego breaks and tells Jorge that Rocío was sold to FARC, entrenched deep in the Amazon natural region. Jorge informs Ballard that there is no way to retrieve the girl, because the region is a largely unmapped jungle wilderness, and any rebel territory is a no-fly zone for the Colombian government. Vampiro notes that medical personnel are allowed to enter on humanitarian grounds, and Jorge reluctantly agrees to help them obtain documentation to pose as doctors for the United Nations (UN). During the journey south, the rebels refuse to let Vampiro enter, and Ballard is forced to continue by himself.

Tim gains access to the FARC camp where Rocío is being held and learns that she is the personal sex slave for a FARC leader, El Alacrán ("The Scorpion"), and, along with others, is required to mash coca leaves to produce cocaine. At night, Ballard is forced to kill El Alacrán while freeing Rocío, and despite the rebels pursuing and firing on them, he gets her to safety. Before they part, he gives her back the necklace Miguel gave him earlier. Rocío is finally returned to her father and brother, and the family returns back to Honduras.

An epilogue says that Tim Ballard testified before the United States Congress and states that his testimony resulted in laws being passed that require the government to cooperate with foreign countries on sex trafficking investigations. The epilogue also claims that there are more people enslaved today than at any other time in history, including when slavery was legal.

Cast

Production

Development

Sound of Freedom was inspired by the work of Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), a non-profit started to stop trafficking. Work on the script began in 2015. He personally requested that Jim Caviezel portray him because he had been impressed with Caviezel's performance as Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). Caviezel said that he considers Sound of Freedom the second most important film he has ever appeared in, ranking it behind his starring role as Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ (2004).

The film was executive produced by Mel Gibson, Tony Robbins, who also partly financed the film's distribution; John Couch; John Paul DeJoria; Paul Hutchinson; Patrick Slim, and Andrew McCubbins, who was convicted in 2020 of running an $89 million Medicare fraud scheme.

The film's score is composed by Javier Navarrete. The film features the song "La Maza," composed by Cuban musician Silvio Rodriguez, and performed by Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa.

Filming

Principal photography began in the summer of 2018. The majority of the film was shot in Cartagena, Colombia. Additional scenes were shot in Calexico, California.

Distribution

The film was completed in 2018 and a distribution deal was made with the Latin American subsidiary of 20th Century Fox. When the studio was purchased by the Walt Disney Company, it shelved the film. Subsequently, the filmmakers bought the distribution rights back from the studio.

Verástegui approached Angel Studios with the release rights. Angel presented the film to an online group of 100,000 investors in its past projects called the Angel Guild, which gave it a "yes" vote within days. In 2023, Angel Studios had acquired the worldwide distribution rights, with a planned release during the second half of 2023. In May of the same year, it received a release date of July 4, 2023.

Angel used equity crowdfunding to raise the funds needed to distribute and market the film. Seven thousand people invested, allowing Angel to meet its $5 million goal in two weeks. They also encouraged patrons to "pay it forward" to allow people who might not otherwise see the film to watch it in theaters for free. Sound of Freedom is Angel Studios' second theatrical release after His Only Son.

On July 26, Angel Studios confirmed that Sound of Freedom would be released in 23 international markets throughout 2023. The film was released in UAE on August 17, in South Africa, Iceland and Lithuania on August 18 and Australia and New Zealand on August 24. Other countries where the film was shown include Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Belize, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia on August 31. In addition, the film was released in the Philippines on September 20, as well as in the United Kingdom and Ireland on September 1 and in Spain on October 11.

During the film's theatrical run, multiple outlets and moviegoers reported theaters claiming to be sold out, though seats in the auditoriums were empty. Some attribute this to pay-it-forward sales by Angel Studios. A message at the end of the film urges viewers to buy an extra ticket "for someone who would not otherwise be able to see the film," suggesting many of the extra tickets were left unused, resulting in almost empty sold out shows and unoccupied seats. Supporters paid for $26.1 million in tickets (roughly 1.8 million seats) for people to see the film for free. Angel Studios said that $21.8 million, or about 84%, of those ticket purchases were redeemed by moviegoers.