“If I’d kept making a complete fiction, I wouldn’t have any of these attacks,” the Mexico native says somewhat ruefully.īut according to Erin Albright, an attorney and longtime adviser to anti-trafficking task forces, Ballard and OUR aren’t actually central to the international fight against human trafficking. With cowriter Rod Barr, he spun a fully fictional screenplay called The Model, about a monied, free-wheeling guy who discovers an underground trade in sexually exploited children, then starts buying the kids back into safety. The next day, he felt he needed to write a film about the issue. I just didn’t know about child trafficking for sexual exploitation.” “I watched it and I couldn’t sleep,” he tells me in an interview. He says he sat down to write the movie in 2017, after seeing a segment on an evening news show-” 60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline, I used to record them all”-about child trafficking. What is the Jim Caviezel–led action drama Sound of Freedom, exactly? A solid independent action film, which has made a surprising amount of money since its release on July 4? A moving true story about a real American hero? A dangerous gateway into misinformation and conspiracy? A gamble that’s paid off beyond anyone’s wildest expectations?įor director Alejandro Monteverde, the answer is simple: Sound of Freedom was a calling.

Freedom rider song traffic