8 million children disappear from all over the world every year. At least 6 million are in slavery; 2 million in the sex trade. ‘The Sound of Freedom’ is based on the true story of a US government special agent working in an underground task force against child trafficking. Blocked by the limitations of bureaucracy, he launched out to rescue children on his own, forming ‘Operation Underground Railroad.
In a world where there are now more people in slavery than even when slavery was legal, this film, featuring and depicted by courageous people of faith dedicated to the eradication of this evil, (including Tim Ballard, the subject, played by Jim Caviezel (‘Passion of the Christ’), and put out by Angel Studios, (who launched ‘The Chosen’), is a ‘wake-up call’ to awareness and action for society, but in particular for the Christian Church.
As Edouardo Verastegui, the film’s producer, says, ‘ We have a weapon of mass instruction and inspiration: movies. Movies move people, how they think.’ Tim Ballard, who has put his life on the line countless times, downplays his own role and points instead to ‘the real heroes’ as the story-tellers, recounting Abraham Lincoln’s words to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who in her time confronted the issue in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’: ‘So you’re the little lady who wrote the book who started this war!’ Their hope is that this film will become a spring-board for a movement of ordinary people who will stand up and say, ‘Enough’!
The film is being shown at Cineworld in Eastbourne on Wednesday 6 and Thursday 7th of September.