“Sound of Freedom” director Alejandro Monteverde and co-writer Rod Barr are speaking up about their intentions for the film as it continues to surpass expectations at the box office.
The surprise hit film documents the horrors of human trafficking by telling the story of Tim Ballard (played by Jim Caviezel), a federal agent who quits his job to rescue a young girl from sex slavery in South America. “Sound of Freedom” has brought in more than $160 million since its July 4 release on a budget of just $14.5 million.
Monteverde and Barr wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter explaining they intended for the film to be apolitical from the start.
“Way back in 2015, when we began researching and writing this project, we told each other many times, ‘If there’s one issue that can unite everyone, it’s ending child trafficking.’ We still believe that. Child trafficking is not a conservative or a liberal issue. It is a fundamental human rights issue, one that strikes at our very core as human beings,” they write.
The “Sound of Freedom” creators go on to say that viewers see “the movie itself is not in the least political,” but is instead recounting what happened, with some minor creative adjustments due to the project being based on a true story and not a documentary.
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“In the development, research, and writing of the story, we don’t recall a single conversation with Tim about politics. Why? Because personal politics should be irrelevant when you are rescuing children from human trafficking,” Monteverde and Barr write.
The authors go on to reject the notion that “Sound of Freedom” was influenced by “conspiracy theories” and say that it should be uniting people and not dividing them.
“We understand that everyone, including those of us who made the movie, have different perspectives on many issues. We made ‘Sound of Freedom’ in a sincere effort to unite people around a fundamental human rights issue,” the director and co-writer conclude. “No single interest group owns the issue of trafficking. We all own it, because it is happening in the world we all share.”