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Sound of Freedom is a 2023 American Christian 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 plot centers around Ballard's Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-sex trafficking organization. While is purportedly based on the life of Ballard, multiple investigative journalists have written about the real-life Ballard and O.U.R., pointing out that the events in the film bear little resemblance to reality. The film was released on July 4, 2023, by Angel Studios. It was a sleeper hit, becoming one of the most successful independent films in history. It has grossed $250 million against a $14.5 million budget. 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 former beauty queen, 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 his children up, 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 the 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. Tim knows that this is because most of them are outside the U.S., but Chris's words stick with him. He speaks to a suspect he arrested, Ernst Oshinsky, deceiving the man into believing he is a pedophile himself. Once he gains Oshinsky's trust, he sets up a meeting with a trafficked child, and is able to arrest Earl Buchanan, the man who purchased Miguel. Tim rescues Miguel and asks him for information that would help him find other missing children. Tim learns that Miguel's sister Rocío is still missing, and the boy asks him to save her. Tim arranges for Miguel to return home to Roberto, but not before Miguel gives Tim his sister's Saint Timothy necklace. Tim 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 gains information on Giselle. After reading about a child sex club in Thailand that was shut down, Tim decides that this is the perfect cover story to acquire a large number of Giselle's children in a sting operation. Vampiro gets a Colombian police officer, Jorge, and a wealthy citizen named Paulo Delgado to help with Tim's mission. Tim's supervisor, Frost, orders Tim to return to the U.S. as he does not have the authority to conduct such an operation on foreign soil. Tim resigns his position rather than abandon the search for Rocío. Sympathizing with Tim'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, Tim and Vampiro pose as sex traffickers and convince Giselle to sell them 54 children, enabling the police to identify and arrest her while dismantling her operation. Rocío is not among the freed youths. After interrogating one of Giselle's associates, Jorge learns that Rocío was sold to FARC, entrenched deep in the Amazon natural region. Jorge informs Tim that there is no way to retrieve the girl, because the region is 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. The rebels refuse to let Vampiro enter, and Tim 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. Tim is forced to kill El Alacrán while freeing Rocío, and despite the rebels pursuing and firing on them, 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 goes home to Honduras. An epilogue states that Tim Ballard testified before the United States Congress and claims 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, or O.U.R., an anti-trafficking non-profit. Work on the script began in 2015. Ballard had 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 has stated 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. 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 th.... Discover the Mike Rothschild popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Mike Rothschild books.