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Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina referred to as it an “superb, gut-wrenching, emotional film.”
“Wow. Wow. Wow,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas wrote of the movie, urging supporters to see it.
And on Wednesday, former President Donald J. Trump is about to host a screening of the film, “Sound of Freedom,” at his non-public membership in New Jersey, probably the most hanging signal but of how the unlikely box-office hit has captured the creativeness of American conservatives.
The film, launched July 4, was the second most-watched movie in North America final weekend, behind “Mission: Not possible — Lifeless Reckoning,” and has made $90.7 million as of Monday, in accordance with information from Comscore.
Primarily based on real-life occasions, the film stars Jim Caviezel as Tim Ballard, a former federal agent who sought to rescue South American kids from intercourse traffickers. Its themes have resonated with a variety of conservatives, together with mainstream Republicans who’ve targeted closely on training and different kids’s points, evangelicals who’ve responded to the film’s non secular overtones, and far-right QAnon believers who’ve for years unfold alarmist fears of kid endangerment.
The plot by no means immediately invokes QAnon, the wide-ranging, pro-Trump conspiracy idea that falsely accuses main Democrats of orchestrating a pedophilia ring, however the motion’s supporters have embraced the movie.
And Mr. Caviezel himself has promoted baseless QAnon theories. Showing on Stephen Bannon’s podcast earlier than the film’s launch, he commented that “there’s a large storm coming,” a QAnon slogan. In 2021, he spoke at a QAnon conference, the place he repeated false claims about adrenochrome, a chemical that some QAnon believers declare is harvested from kids.
The film’s endorsement from presidential candidates echoes grass-roots power round what Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist, referred to as the “mainstreaming of the middle of the QAnon motion, which is that that is about defending kids.”
In focus teams of Republican voters, Ms. Longwell mentioned, voters have introduced up QAnon much less explicitly than up to now and as a substitute extra ceaselessly specific considerations about colleges “indoctrinating kids” and transgender athletes competing in sports activities.
A spokesman for Angel Studios, the corporate that produced the movie, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Efforts to succeed in Mr. Caviezel have been unsuccessful, however on Wednesday, he responded to essential protection of the film. Showing on “The Benny Present,” a conservative podcast, he repeated a citation from the film that refers to a Bible verse: “Higher a millstone be hung round their necks that they be forged into the ocean that they need to ever damage one in all these little ones,” he mentioned.
Each Mr. Caviezel and Mr. Ballard have been anticipated to attend the screening on Wednesday at Mr. Trump’s membership.
Specialists on misinformation expressed misgivings in regards to the film’s message.
“I do assume that human trafficking is actual and baby trafficking is actual and these are actual issues,” mentioned Kathryn Olmsted, a professor of historical past on the College of California, Davis, who has studied the position of conspiracy theories in American politics. “It’s simply that this renewed, extremely politicized concentrate on it’s emblematic of accelerating political polarization in our society.”
The person on the middle of “Sound of Freedom,” Mr. Ballard, is a former Division of Homeland Safety agent who based an anti-trafficking group and was appointed by Mr. Trump to a federal advisory panel on human trafficking. He has been accused of exaggerating his exploits.
The film depicts Mr. Ballard getting down to rescue two siblings who have been offered by intercourse traffickers; he in the end saves dozens of kids.
“God’s kids will not be on the market,” Mr. Caviezel says within the film, when requested by one other character why he sought to do that work.
Daniela Peterka-Benton, the tutorial director for the International Middle of Human Trafficking at Montclair State College, mentioned the film’s concentrate on saviors fairly than victims resulted in an incomplete, glamorized depiction of human trafficking. Most youngsters, she mentioned, will not be “snatched away” however are trafficked by folks they know.
“It does a disservice to the victims; it does a disservice to folks actually preventing to finish human trafficking and to supply providers to survivors,” she mentioned. “I imply, there’s a lot extra to it than simply the rescue.”
Nonetheless, politicians, commentators and Hollywood celebrities have praised the movie.
Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s daughter, who has largely stayed out of politics because the 2020 election, promoted the movie in June, writing on Twitter that it “sheds mild on the harrowing actuality” of human trafficking, “awakening our collective conscience and galvanizing us to take motion for these trapped in its darkish net.”
Republicans — lots of whom have been far much less fearful in regards to the Trump administration’s separation of migrant kids from their mother and father — have additionally seized on the problem.
Final week, Senate Republicans’ official Twitter account shared a video that pointed to New York Instances reporting about migrant kids compelled to work harmful jobs throughout the USA. The publish misleadingly accused President Biden of getting “created the biggest baby trafficking ring in U.S. historical past.”
In liberal Manhattan, “Sound of Freedom” viewers at a number of theaters mentioned they’d come not for the politics, however as a result of they wished to see an excellent thriller based mostly on what they believed to be a real story.
“I got here as a result of I imagine that there’s baby trafficking occurring and there’s simply not sufficient mild being shed on it,” mentioned Malaika Villamizar, 19, who lives in Manhattan.
She was stunned to listen to, nonetheless, that the film had been promoted by Mr. Trump and different Republican politicians. She mentioned she had heard in regards to the movie on TikTok.
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