The Sound of Freedom, a film based on a true story about the scourge of child sex trafficking, has grossed more than $140 million since its July 4 opening. The film debuted in 2,852 theaters. According to the distributor, Angel Studios, it played in 3,411 theaters as of July 28, a number expected to surpass 4,000 as the film’s popularity swells.
Actor Jim Caviezel stars as Tim Ballard*, a former special agent at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who rescued children from criminal sex offenders. Forbes reported that SOF is the fifteenth largest movie of 2023 for the U.S. box office, “ranking ahead of some notable titles by major Hollywood studios, and it’s even starting to outperform the big-budgeted, Tom-Cruise led Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.”
Detractors have said the movie is for conspiracy theorists and non-thinking viewers. The scoffers repeat terminology, including words like “moral panic,” “extremist propaganda,” and “QAnon-adjacent.” Their venomous reviews serve only to underscore their own startling lack of brain power.
A21, a group established in 2008, is determined to “abolish slavery everywhere, forever.” They do brave, life-changing work to rescue those enslaved around the globe. A21 reports that more people—almost 50 million—are enslaved now than at any time in history, and human trafficking brings in 150 billion dollars a year. The SOF film points to similar statistics.
Tara Rodas, a federal inspector-general employee for seventeen years, volunteered in 2021 to help the Biden administration address the surge of unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border. She discovered U.S. open-border policies enabling the exploitation of those children.
In April 2023, she shared her revelations with Congress. Speaking before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, Rodas said: “I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in the home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] delivers a child to sponsors.
“Some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of transnational criminal organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income. This is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking.
“Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the U.S. government has become the middleman in a large-scale, multi-billion-dollar, child-trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.”
Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that federal officials have failed to track 85,000 migrant children.
Last week on American Thought Leaders, Rodas made a point that was highlighted by Ballard’s character in the SOF: “Cocaine can be sold one time, but a child can be sold over and over again, multiple times a day, week after week, year after year. They’re making millions of dollars off of the lives of the children.”
If child sex trafficking is nothing more than a ghost plaguing the imaginations of Q-Anon conspirators, why are the facts shared by A21 and Rodas mirrored in the Sound of Freedom?
Interestingly, CBS Evening News ran a piece in 2014 on Tim Ballard and his work in Colombia. CBS cast his efforts in a positive light, as something viewers should know about and support. Why has U.S. media coverage shifted from support to condemnation within a decade?
Ballard, the Sound of Freedom, and anyone shining a light on a topic as uncomfortable as child sex trafficking have drawn the ire of media and Hollywood elites, according to Roman Balmakov, host of Facts Matter at the Epoch Times. Balmakov says the movie is “actively being hidden from the American public.”
Produced by Eduardo Verástegui, SOF wrapped production in 2018 when an international division of 20th Century Fox “made a deal for a future release in Latin America.” Disney later bought Fox, and the project was shelved until Angel Studios bought worldwide distribution rights earlier this year.
Balmakov suggests that Angel’s crowdfunding business model replaces the traditional gatekeepers—elites in media and Hollywood—with average moviegoers. Efforts to smear the film have backfired.
A return to “We, the people” sounds appealing, doesn’t it? The coastal elites have never represented the values of most Americans.
See the Sound of Freedom, and decide the value of the film for yourself. Angel offers viewers free tickets and a chance to buy tickets for others.
*Check out Ballard’s work at Operation Underground Railroad, The Spear Fund, and the PragerU documentary, Light in the Darkness. He was on Mark Levin’s show last week, discussing the SOF and his rescue missions around the world.
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