‘Sound of Freedom’ Becomes Global, Cultural Flashpoint
A Central American head of state agrees: God’s children are not for sale.
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who is a one-man criminal gang busting machine, recently met with the producer of the indie box office hit, the “Sound of Freedom,” Mexican actor Eduardo Verástegui. The pair signed a Letter of Intent in the Casa Presidencial agreeing to combat child sex trafficking, the theme of the movie. The agreement, specifically, is between the government of El Salvador and the Viva México movement.
The film was shown this past weekend in the Teatro Presidente in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, to a crowd of 1,500 people.
Gracias, presidente @nayibbukele , por invitarnos a presentar Sound of Freedom en El Salvador. Gracias, por su decisión y valentía, al firmar un convenio de trabajo y cooperación para impulsar una lucha sin cuartel contra el crimen feroz de la trata de niños. Celebramos haber… pic.twitter.com/irXWrRRNsE
— Eduardo Verástegui (@EVerastegui) July 30, 2023
“This is the first time the film will be presented outside the United States, where a President is the host … where a President invites the public to see the film for free,” Verástegui said.
“This is an important problem and governments must act rapidly, decisively, and forcefully to prevent it,” Bukele added.
The movie will continue to be shown well beyond the coasts of the United States. It will be in theaters throughout South and Central America starting on August 31th. South Africa will have its first release on August 18th, Australia and New Zealand on August 24th, and the United Kingdom and Ireland on September 1st.
For a movie that struggled for eight years to find a distributor - until Angel Studios, a crowd-funded media company acquired worldwide distribution rights and agreed to release the film in theaters this year - its upcoming global presence is a jaw-dropping turn of events.
The film stars Jim Caviezel (star of “The Passion of the Christ”) as a former U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security agent (the real-life Tim Ballard) who quits his government job to go rogue and rescue a pair of young Honduran siblings who’ve been kidnapped by a Colombian pedophile ring. It’s an unsettling, raw action-drama, but it has hit a home run with audiences, especially conservatives and Christians, who long for movies devoid of leftist agitprop and who appreciate a moral rallying cry. Pay it forward, as Caviezel advises audiences at the end of the movie, and buy a ticket for someone else.
To date the movie has grossed over $149 million. The budget? $14.5 million.
While creative criticism of a movie is to be expected, and the “Sound of Freedom” certainly has drawn its fair share of that on Rotten Tomatoes, other critiques lean conspiracy theory - a phenom which only draws more committed ticket buyers. For example, NPR claims the movie has “QAnon supporters” promoting it, while Federale, a writer for Vdare, opines that it will likely "to end up as propaganda for those who want to open up America’s borders.”
The open-borders complaint is especially of interest to Border Hawk News, given our bent.
But is it a legitimate one?
The former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan (who has launched a new non-profit, Border911.com) has recruited Tim Ballard to his team. Homan, a border hawk extraordinaire, even favorably mentioned “Sound of Freedom” in an interview on the El Conservador radio show.
Ballard, himself, wrote a fiery editorial for the Deseret News titled, “I’ve fought sex trafficking at the border. This is why we need a wall.” Meanwhile, a congressional movie screening of the film was held on Capitol Hill, whereby Speaker Kevin McCarthy complained about the Biden Administration’s immigration policies and about how many children are being “trafficked into America because they believe the border to be open.” Finally, President Donald Trump, seated next to Jim Caviezel, hosted his own showing at his private New Jersey club.
If anything, the movie has brought scores of newcomers to the ongoing debate about national security, unfettered migration, and the whereabouts of the 85,000 unaccompanied minors in the custody of the U.S. Health and Human Services during Joe Biden’s tenure.
As President Bukele noted, “What’s more important than our children? This movie has had so much success because it tackles a topic … that few people want to discuss. Who buys these children to sexualize them?”
Who does, indeed? Shedding light on the present darkness will certainly help expose some of the most evildoers on the planet.
You can find Izzy Lyman on Twitter.
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