‘Sound of Freedom’: The Wild True Story Behind 2023’s Most Controversial Film (2024)

What is the Jim Caviezel–led action drama Sound of Freedom, exactly? A solid independent action film, which has made a surprising amount of money since its release on July 4? A moving true story about a real American hero? A dangerous gateway into misinformation and conspiracy? A gamble that’s paid off beyond anyone’s wildest expectations?

For director Alejandro Monteverde, the answer is simple: Sound of Freedom was a calling. He says he sat down to write the movie in 2017, after seeing a segment on an evening news show—”60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline, I used to record them all”—about child trafficking. “I watched it and I couldn’t sleep,” he tells me in an interview. “I knew about human trafficking. I just didn’t know about child trafficking for sexual exploitation.”

The next day, he felt he needed to write a film about the issue. With cowriter Rod Barr, he spun a fully fictional screenplay called The Model, about a monied, free-wheeling guy who discovers an underground trade in sexually exploited children, then starts buying the kids back into safety. “If I’d kept making a complete fiction, I wouldn’t have any of these attacks,” the Mexico native says somewhat ruefully.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, a producer on the still-nascent movie asked Monteverde if he’d heard of Tim Ballard, a former homeland security special agent who had started to make waves for a nonprofit he founded, Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), which reportedly had a hand in rescuing trafficked children. “So I Googled him,” Monteverde says.

The online results were plentiful and included a glowing CBS News feature from 2014 on Operation Triple Take, a joint action between OUR and the Colombian government that reportedly rescued 123 trafficked people—55 of whom were children. “And I was like, Wow, I would love to meet this guy,” Monteverde said. “So I met him and I saw that his story surpassed my fiction.”

With Barr, he rewrote the script. Now the film would depict a heavily fictionalized take on the Colombian rescue from a few years before.

According to investigative journalist Lynn Packer, Ballard had long been seeking a wider platform for his and OUR’s activities. In 2013, he and a group of filmmakers sought funding from conservative political commentator Glenn Beck for a reality series that would depict the rescue of trafficked children. Though the series never came to fruition, some members of the production team made a documentary about Ballard, released in 2016 and called The Abolitionists, that gave Ballard even more mainstream legitimacy. Soon, he was speaking at organizations like Google.

But according to Erin Albright, an attorney and longtime adviser to anti-trafficking task forces, Ballard and OUR aren’t actually central to the international fight against human trafficking. “The majority of the [anti-trafficking] field views them as fringe,” she tells me. “They peddle sensationalism…and they fundraise off it.”

In 2018, when Monteverde was making his movie, these critiques weren’t part of the conversation. “I never in a million years imagined that this would be political,” he said of the film, which would become a Ballard biopic—albeit one that takes great liberties with the facts. After all, he says, “I saw the piece [on child trafficking] on the mainstream media … I always thought that this was going to be a film that we would all come together over.”

If this movie had been released shortly after it was made, that might have happened. Sound of Freedom was independently produced for a reported $14.5 million and financed mainly by a group of Mexican backers, according to the filmmakers. But like many other projects, the film lost its distributor when Disney acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019. Sound of Freedom remained on the shelf until it was picked up by Provo, Utah–based Angel Studios in 2023, with a plan to release the film in theaters around the country.

Several critical things happened in the years between the film’s wrap and its arrival in theaters. In a series that kicked off in 2020, Vice journalists Anna Merlan and Tim Marchman began a probe of Ballard and OUR, discovering “a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading.” In a subsequent report, they alleged Ballard and his organization had engaged in “blundering missions—carried out in part by real estate agents and high-level donors—that seemed aimed mainly at generating exciting video footage.” (Ballard has not yet responded to Vanity Fair’s requests for comment. Though a representative from Angel Studios initially proposed an interview with Ballard, they later said they were unable to reach him to arrange a meeting.)

These reports were widely read and shared but were reviled as often as they were praised. That’s because of a second development: the QAnon set of conspiracy theories, which originated in 2017 and gradually gained notice by the mainstream in the ensuing years. The movement’s “core falsehood,” as The New York Times put it, asserts that “a group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”

Around late 2020, QAnon started to use claims about child trafficking as an outreach strategy. As The New York Times reported at the time, adherents began “flooding social media with posts about human trafficking, joining parenting Facebook groups and glomming on to hashtag campaigns like #SaveTheChildren,” then moving “the conversation to baseless theories about who they believe is doing the trafficking: a cabal of nefarious elites that includes Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey and Pope Francis.

‘Sound of Freedom’: The Wild True Story Behind 2023’s Most Controversial Film (2024)

FAQs

What is controversial about the movie Sound of Freedom? ›

One of the primary points of contention revolves around the film's portrayal of child trafficking. Experts, including Erin Albright, a former fellow for the Department of Justice's anti-trafficking task force, argue that the depiction is inaccurate and sensationalized.

What is the true story behind the Sound of Freedom movie? ›

Billed as a story about the real-life Tim Ballard, a former special agent for the Department of Homeland Security and founder of the anti-trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), Sound of Freedom has become mired in controversy over criticisms that it features misleading depictions of child ...

What parts of the Sound of Freedom are not true? ›

“Sound of Freedom” was based on a true story but contains dramatized elements. Filmmakers took creative license in portraying the different ways that children can be trafficked, including in shipping containers.

Was the Timoteo necklace real? ›

operator rescues Teddy, the boy gives him a dog-tag type necklace inscribed with “Timoteo”, a scripture reference to 1 Timothy 6:11, and the words “Man of God”. True to the real story, the little boy's sister had given her brother this necklace before they were separated to symbolize the hope of rescue.

Why did Disney Shelf Sound of Freedom? ›

Disney told Factchequeado media that, before acquiring Fox – which originally had the rights to the production, – there was an agreement for the distribution of the film only in Latin America, and that later the director of “Sound of Freedom” bought the rights. They did not refer to the fact as a “rejection.”

How many children are trafficked each year? ›

Trafficking of children has been documented in every region of the world. A widely used figure regarding the prevalence of this practice is provided by the ILO, which estimates that 1.2 million children are trafficked each year; this estimate includes cross-border and internal trafficking.

What happened to Giselle from Sound of Freedom? ›

Documents from Colombia show Kely was arrested as part of the operation and imprisoned for 18 months but eventually released under habeas corpus. Her attorneys say she is no longer being actively prosecuted despite Ballard traveling to Colombia to testify against her.

What is the plot of Sound of Freedom? ›

Why did Sound of Freedom take 5 years? ›

There is no question that it was difficult to reach Sound of Freedom's success. After Disney bought 20th Century Fox, the company that was scheduled to release the film, there were problems. This purchase caused the movie to be placed on hold for a while until Angel Studios was able to secure distribution rights.

How many children did Tim Ballard save? ›

Remember how I said his organization has rescued 3,800 victims? Of those 3,800, Tim and his wife, Katherine, have personally adopted two. He has a passion for rescuing exploited children around the world, and he's leading the charge against sex trafficking.

Is operation of the Underground Railroad legitimate? ›

The organization has been criticized for its conduct during sting operations and has been accused of exaggerating claims regarding its work. There have been not many verified rescues performed by the group, and the group's claims of rescues have misled donors and the public about what the group does.

Were the brother and sister in Sound of Freedom real? ›

While the real-life little boy did have a sister, Tim's jungle search in the movie was instead very loosely inspired by his organization's real-life search for a little boy named Gardy, who had been kidnapped from the grounds of his father's church.

Why was Sound of Freedom banned? ›

Sound of Freedom became the subject of heated political controversy this summer, with the right wing championing the film's anti-sex-trafficking message and the left criticizing the film's ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory—the central idea being that a group of Satanic global elites are running the world and preying ...

What's the special message at the end of Sound of Freedom? ›

As the credits roll at the end of the film, U.S. audiences saw a timer on the screen counting down to a "special message" which was actor Jim Caviezel, who plays Ballard, urging the audience to tell people about the film but also to "pay it forward" and buy tickets for others who might not be able to afford their own ...

How accurate is the movie Sound of Freedom? ›

Filmmakers took 'creative liberties' with story about trafficking. Unfortunately, what many don't realize is that although "Sound of Freedom" is advertised as a “true story," that story is highly fictionalized, with even Angel Studios, the film's distributor, acknowledging that it took "creative liberties."

What is the problem in the song Sound of Silence? ›

The Simon and Garfunkel classic, “The Sound of Silence,” criticizes silence that perpetuates oppression. Living amid familiar darkness, people struggle to hear others screaming for recognition. Social movements, some of which have used this song, have slowly changed the faces of oppression.

What is controversial about All Quiet on the Western Front? ›

The movie was subsequently banned. All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the many books burned by the Nazi Party after Hitler took power, because of its representation of German soldiers as disillusioned and its perceived negative representation of Germany.

Why was the movie music controversial? ›

The controversy over the film began when the trailer and first music video for the film were released in November, with many taking to Twitter to ask why Sia had not hired someone on the autistic spectrum to play the character.

What is the main conflict in the movie Freedom Writers? ›

Summary: In both The Freedom Writers Diary and the film Freedom Writers, the main challenges and conflicts revolve around issues of racial tension, gang violence, and educational inequality.

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