The film Sound of Freedom hopes to catalyze the ending of illegal slavery in our day. It’s off to a great start! The film brought in $2.5M more than the #2 film at the box office on the Fourth of July. The second place film happened to be Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in 2,000 more theaters and with a Walt Disney Studios budget that dwarfed that of Sound of Freedom. Interestingly, when Disney bought 21st Century Fox, they shelved Sound of Freedom, which was going to be distributed by Fox.

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Sound of Freedom, now in the hands of Angel Studios (The Chosen), shattered the goal of two million tickets on opening week to match the two million children being trafficked in the world right now. Click to see how many tickets have been sold now.

Modern Slavery?

I was onstage when I found out about modern slavery. I was performing my one-man play about abolitionist John Woolman who was speaking against slavery a century before the Civil War in America. After the play ends I stay in character and answer questions from the audience. The year was 1998, and someone in the audience asked, “John, what do you think of modern slavery?” As Woolman I had the benefit of not living in modern times, so I asked the woman to tell us about it. She told how there are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in history. It floored me!

If you didn’t know there are roughly 50 million slaves today, you really must see Sound of Freedom. Even if you were aware slavery still exists, the film will put faces to the numbers.

The main story follows federal agent Tim Ballard (played by Caviezel who portrayed Jesus in The Passion of the Christ) as he lays everything on the line to track down two kidnapped children.

This film starts by what appears to be breaking a major rule in scriptwriting: The hero of the story should be introduced right at the opening and be the last person we see. In Sound of Freedom that person is 11-year-old Rocío, but it’s Ballard who spends the entire film searching for her and her four-year-old brother, Miguel. After the credits begin to roll, Caviezel comes on screen to explain it is actually the children who are the heroes. In a theatre, where “you can’t hit the pause button,” those children have more power than politicians and the global elite.

Think About One Child

There’s a moment in the film where Ballard is talking to a wealthy man (played by Eduardo Verástegui, who is actually a producer on the film and worked with Alejandro Monteverde, its director, on Bella, which highlights the sanctity of life). Verástegui’s character turns down Ballard’s request to bankroll a sting operation that could liberate 50 children after learning Ballard has been cut loose by the Department of Homeland Security. The film simplifies the real reason for that action, which is explained by Ballard in an interview he and Caviezel did with Jordan Peterson (the interview contains some vulgarity). As the wealthy man drives away from the meeting he opens a manila envelope Ballard slipped him. Inside is a photo of Rocío. Ballard wrote on it: “Forget the fifty kids. Think about one: Rocío, age 11. Sold into sex slavery.”

The film gives you the numbers: Ballard says human trafficking is “the fastest growing crime network that the world has ever seen. It has already passed the illegal arms trade, and soon it’s going pass the drug trade. Because you can sell a bag of cocaine one time; a child five to ten times a day.” Ballard also shares that there’s recently been a 5,000% increase in child pornography, which is driving the sale of children. But what the film does best is put the faces of Rocío and Miguel before us, and as intercessors those children motivate us to pray and act on their behalf.

Ballard is encouraged by his wife (played by Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino, who played the lead in another film exposing trafficking, Trade of Innocents) to leave his job and pension behind to liberate those two children. Ballard explains their motivation: “‘Cause God’s children are not for sale.”

He travels to Columbia and picks an unlikely partner, Vampiro (Bill Camp: 12 Years a Slave), an ex-cartel gangster who left prison to return to the filth of his former life. His explanation of why he’s helping children is haunting. He tells how he hired a 25-year-old prostitute, but after their transaction he notices cat faces painted on her toenails. He discovers she’s only 14, and she’s been trafficked since she was six. He said, “All of a sudden I’m hit by this tidal wave: this tsunami of darkness. And I know I’m the sadness in her eyes. Me. I’m the darkness, and I know the darkness has to die.” He told how he pointed his gun at his own head and put his finger on the trigger. Then he said, “If there is a time to ask if God exists, that would be it. I did. When God tells you what to do, you cannot hesitate.”

The Peterson interview elicited a similar testimony from @M3THOD1978:

I’m 44 now. But I have to be honest with you all. At some point in my wasted youth, I used to participate in paying for play. One night, after having had many nights, I called and was provided a girl who came with some Mexican thugs, who didn’t speak English. The girl started to actually cry when I was ready to take what I paid for :(. At the time, in my tipsy coked state of mind, I thought to myself how awesome I found someone who was new to the lifestyle and was just shy and needed to be broken into the life she chose. I was so wrong. I look back now, 10 years past, and I realize she was trafficked, I’m sure of it. And I am now a man of God and devastated. I went to this movie alone, and cried at the state of who I was, and who some still are. I street preach the Bible to those who will hear; and have only realized my need for a loving God, after I was the darkness in earth. I am so sorry to that girl, and wish I could go back. Regret is real. God is so great, that he will use the lowest of the barrel, to call others to him. I am living proof. Forgive me Lord. I am lost without you. 

Pray Sound of Freedom brings many of the millions who are fueling this evil to come under conviction.

There’s a moment in the film when Ballard goes alone into a region of the Colombian jungle the police refuse to enter. I was struck by the power of this image: Caviezel, who’s played Jesus, was willing to give his life to save one little girl, just as Jesus would have died to save one soul.

Here’s the trailer:

And you don’t have to wait until you see the film to start praying for the end of human trafficking. You can start with this haunting music video:

Also, don’t let the ticket price keep you from seeing the film in a theater. Many have paid it forward (a plan Angel Studios used with The Chosen), or you can pay it forward for some who can’t afford it: www.Angel.com/FREEDOM.

Angel Studios is carrying the film into more theaters for their second weekend, but in the interview with Peterson, Caveziel indicated some theaters are rejecting Sound of Freedom. Pray for open doors!

The film is rated PG-13 “for thematic content involving sex trafficking, violence, language, sexual references, some drug references and smoking throughout.”

Though I don’t think there’s ever a reason to add vulgarity to a film, there’s no blasphemy and no f-bombs. Everything is done tastefully in telling the horrors of sex trafficking, but you definitely see kidnapping, and you’re aware of what’s going on behind closed curtains. The closest they come to showing what’s going on is when a man lays an 11-year-old girl on a bed and starts undoing his belt. Ballard stops him right there. There’s some PG-level violence. See the PluggedIn (Focus on the Family) review for more details.

I saw it with fellow IFA contributing writer Joyce Swingle, and we agree that teens  — with proper preparation and debrief — may be able handle this film, and it could do even more in a young person’s prayer/action trajectory than for those of us who already know what’s going on. At the same time, it is an intense movie. Joyce wrote an excellent article about debriefing from this vicarious trauma.

IFA has an excellent Special Report, “The Dark World of Human Trafficking,” and also makes it easy to request your representatives in Congress take action to help stop trafficking. Click here or find it under the Action tab at www.IFApray.org.

We’ve also covered other films that expose trafficking: The Sound of Violet and Pursuit of Freedom.

In the comments below post your prayers for Sound of Freedom and other films about human trafficking to break through indifference so chains can be broken.

 Rich Swingle has taught and performed in 39 nations on six continents, mostly with his own one-man plays, including I Dreamed I Was Free, about the abolition of legalized slavery. He’s performed in more than 45 film projects, and his bride Joyce Swingle, another contributing writer for IFA, have 41 screen children. The Swingles live in New York City. www.RichDrama.com. Photo Credit: Angel Studios.