They are kicked out of their homes and trade sex for food and a place to stay, and end up being trafficked by a pimp,” she says. Yet from the movie’s opening montage, which shows surveillance footage of children being snatched by strangers off the streets, Sound of Freedom offers a “false perception” of how the majority of child trafficking actually takes place, according to Albright.Ĭontrary to urban legends about kids getting abducted in Target parking lots by strangers, or anonymous figures snatching children from alleyways, the majority of child trafficking victims know and trust their traffickers, explains Teresa Huizar, CEO of the National Children’s Alliance (Huizar has not seen the film yet, but was able to provide context about the myths and realities of child trafficking). State Department has reported that 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders per year, with about 50 percent of these cases being children. Reliable statistics are hard to come by due to the underreported nature of the phenomenon, but the U.S. “Understanding the complexities of this crisis and educating oneself about the reality of child trafficking empowers individuals to make a difference,” the post reads, including a link to anti-trafficking resources like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.Īs the post notes, child trafficking is a very real and extremely serious problem, in part because it is so difficult to track. Yet one demographic has expressed concern about the film’s tremendous popularity: the anti-child trafficking experts who Sound of Freedom is ostensibly about.Įvery Awful Thing Trump Has Promised to Do in a Second Term Such criticism hasn’t stopped people from flocking to theaters: to date, Sound of Freedom has grossed $40 million at the box office, with many of its defenders framing it as yet another lightning rod in the culture wars and accusing mainstream theaters of suppressing the film (the CEO of AMC, for his part, has denied this, calling such rumors “really bizarre”). The movie, with its central narrative about a former Homeland Security agent (Caviezel) embarking on a high-stakes mission to rescue children from a Colombian trafficking ring, has drawn criticism for its self-serious tone, its star’s promotion of conspiracy theories, and its dubious source material (Caviezel plays a fictionalized version of Tim Ballard, the founder of the anti-trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad, which has been accused of embellishing some of its more extreme claims, which they have denied).

When Sound of Freedom, the new Jim Caviezel thriller about child trafficking, was released in theaters last week, it garnered mixed reviews, to say the least.

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