Sound of Freedom (2023)

The film opens in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where Roberto Aguilar, a struggling father, lives with his two children, Miguel and Rocío. Rocío plays a drum and sings in the market when a polished woman named Gisselle--presenting herself as a talent scout and former beauty queen--approaches Roberto. She tells him she can sign Rocío and Miguel to modeling work and asks him to bring them to a studio for photographs. Trusting her promise of opportunity, Roberto brings the children to the appointment. The kids join other youngsters for a group photoshoot under Gisselle's supervision. She gives Roberto a time to return and pick them up. When he returns at the appointed hour, the building is dark and empty; the children are gone. Roberto searches the premises in panic, and the narrative shows the children herded into a van and carried away. It becomes clear that Gisselle--whose true name is Katy Juarez--has trafficked the youngsters, selling them into a network of sexual exploitation.

The story shifts to Calexico, California, where Tim Ballard works as a Special Agent for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Tim conducts sting operations against individuals exchanging child pornography and arrests many offenders. Despite bringing hundreds to justice, he grows increasingly tormented by one fact: his unit arrests predators but retrieves none of the victims. A colleague named Chris confronts him with that failure, and Tim begins to pursue direct rescues. He reengages Ernst Oshinsky, a suspect he previously arrested, by masquerading as a fellow predator and quoting passages from Oshinsky's own manuscript in order to gain the man's trust. Tim uses that deception to set up a meeting with a trafficked child and then has law enforcement arrest Oshinsky once the contact is made.

From information obtained through the sting, Tim traces a buyer who purchased a child named "Teddy Bear." At a U.S.–Mexico border meeting in Calexico, a man named Earl Buchanan arrives with a young boy; the agents arrest him and take custody of the child, who is Miguel Aguilar. Tim comforts Miguel and takes him out to eat. Miguel recounts in fragmented, traumatized detail how Gisselle and her associates abducted the children and forced them into captivity for months. He shows Tim a small necklace engraved with St. Timothy's image--an amulet Rocío had given him for protection--and tells Tim that his sister Rocío is still missing. Miguel pleads with Tim to find her.

Tim returns Miguel to Roberto in Honduras but keeps the necklace. Back at home in the United States he confides in his wife, Katherine Ballard, who has borne him six children. Katherine listens and urges him to help, which strengthens his resolve. Tim seeks authorization from his supervisor, a man named Frost, to pursue an international rescue. Frost warns him that such operations are beyond their mandate and that he cannot sanction a unilateral mission abroad. Tim refuses to abandon the effort; he resigns from HSI rather than leave the search incomplete.

Tim travels to Cartagena, Colombia, following leads that the trafficked children are being moved through South America. There he meets Vampiro, a gaunt former accountant for a drug cartel who now dedicates himself to rescuing children from sexual slavery. Vampiro recounts his past: he fell in love with a woman who presented as an adult but later learned she had been a child victim, exploited since the age of six; the revelation drove him to attempt suicide and then to a new life mission. Tim also meets Jorge, a Colombian police officer willing to cooperate, and Paul (Paulo/Paulo Delgado), a wealthy local who provides logistical support.

Together they gather intelligence on Katy Juarez and her organization. Tim conceives a plan modeled on an international sting: they will pose as operators of a child sexual exploitation ring and convince Katy to deliver a large number of children to their fabricated location. Drawing on reports of a child sex club that authorities once shut down in Thailand, they construct a fake sex hotel as bait and use Jorge as an intermediary to arrange the sale.

The team arranges a meeting on a beachside compound. Tim, Vampiro, Jorge, and Paul set up the cover and coordinate with Colombian authorities and, discreetly, with members of the U.S. Embassy whom Frost has spoken to privately. Katy agrees to deliver children in multiple groups. When half the children arrive, a conflict erupts: one of Katy's men, a footman known as Carne, attempts to abscond with a little boy named Simba. Tim pursues and blocks Carne, and Carne's henchman pulls a gun and threatens Tim. Vampiro intervenes physically, subduing Carne's aid and preventing violence from escalating into a massacre. Colombian police and the covert U.S. contingent move in and arrest Katy and her associates as they attempt to maintain their charade of victimhood. Law enforcement secures the location and frees fifty-four children from Katy's network. The rescued youngsters run together on the sand, sing, and play; Vampiro watches them and calls their singing the "sound of freedom." Despite the successful rescue of fifty-four victims, Rocío is not among them.

Tim's team interrogates one of Katy's associates, a man nicknamed Fuego. During questioning, agents show him a photograph of Carne dead in his detention cell. In the film, Carne's body is depicted as having been killed while in custody; the interrogators present the image to break Fuego's resistance. Confronted with evidence that Carne has been killed, Fuego confesses that Rocío Aguilar was not in Katy's custody when the group was apprehended. He reveals that Katy sold Rocío onward to a guerrilla faction--the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC--and that the girl was taken into a remote rebel-controlled area deep in the jungle. Jorge briefs Tim that the region is uncharted by official maps, heavily protected by the rebels, and off-limits to government forces; he insists that there is no feasible way to retrieve a captive from FARC territory.

Vampiro proposes a way in: medical teams are sometimes granted humanitarian access to rebel regions if they carry vaccines and credentials. Jorge reluctantly agrees to help fabricate the necessary paperwork and to broker a plausible cover story. Tim, Vampiro, and Jorge prepare to travel south up a river into the jungle, posing as a medical mission delivering vaccines. As their boat proceeds upriver, armed FARC lookouts spot them and inspect their belongings. The rebels allow Tim to proceed after inspecting the medical supplies and verifying the documentation, but they deny entry to Vampiro; they refuse to let Vampiro into the encampment because of his history. The rebels take Vampiro aside and keep him from advancing, forcing Tim to go forward alone into the heart of the guerrilla camp.

Inside the FARC compound, Tim is assigned to perform a technical inspection of children and some drug-production facilities as part of the ruse. He sees Rocío working in the camp--she is gaunt, frightened, and pressed into labor mashing coca leaves for cocaine production. The film shows Rocío placed under the direct control of a camp commander known as El Alacrán, or The Scorpion. The Scorpion keeps her as a personal captive, abusing and exploiting her; she is isolated from other children and forced to serve the leader's needs. Tim observes Rocío's condition, tries to soothe her, and determines that he must extract her immediately. He prepares for a night-time rescue.

At night, when the rebels gather to drink and sing, Tim moves covertly toward Rocío's quarters. Rocío screams when she recognizes him; the shout alerts the camp. The Scorpion hears the commotion, rushes in, and seizes Rocío, preparing to sexually assault her. Tim confronts him. The two men engage in a brutal, close-quarters struggle; Tim fights the Scorpion with whatever he has at hand. During the hand-to-hand struggle Tim manages to kill El Alacrán, ending the rebel leader's life in the melee. The film shows the Scorpion's death as the result of Tim's direct, physical actions in the confrontation.

As soon as the leader falls, the camp erupts into chaos. Rebels begin to fire their weapons and pursue Tim and Rocío through the compound. Tim fights through gunfire, carries or guides Rocío to the river, and flees the encampment. He reaches the boat where Vampiro has waited despite being barred earlier, and they speed downstream as rebels shoot at them from the riverbanks. The boat reaches a rendezvous point on the shore where a vehicle--driven by Jorge or other allies--awaits; Tim and Rocío leap into the van and race out of the jungle while rebel bullets pepper the vehicle. They escape the camp and drive toward safety. Along the route, Tim returns the St. Timothy necklace to Rocío, the token Miguel had given him as a promise to reunite the siblings.

Back in Cartagena, medical personnel treat Rocío at a hospital; authorities process the rescued children. Tim brings Rocío to a reunion with her father Roberto and brother Miguel. They embrace in the hospital ward; embodiments of fatigue and relief show on their faces. Roberto later brings a real drum for Rocío and places it in her room at home in Honduras. Rocío sits on the bed, takes up the drum, and begins to play and sing--the film returns to the opening musical motif as the family is reunited.

The epilogue text reports that Tim Ballard testifies before the U.S. Congress about international child sex trafficking and that his testimony contributes to laws requiring greater cooperation between the U.S. government and foreign authorities in sex trafficking investigations. The film notes that the real Tim Ballard left his federal post and later founded an organization to help locate and free children from sexual slavery. The closing material states that more people are enslaved worldwide today than at many points in recorded history, and that a substantial proportion of victims are children.

Throughout the narrative, several confrontations and their outcomes are explicit: Tim and his HSI team arrest Ernst Oshinsky during a re-staged meeting; Tim orchestrates and leads a beach sting operation in Cartagena that results in the arrests of Katy Juarez (Gisselle) and her crew and the liberation of fifty-four children; Fuego breaks under interrogation after seeing a photograph of Carne dead in custody and confesses that Rocío was sold to FARC; Tim kills El Alacrán in hand-to-hand combat during the jungle rescue; and Tim and his collaborators escape the rebel firing squad by boat and van. Carne is presented as having been killed in his cell while detained; the film shows his corpse and uses his death as leverage in interrogation, though the identity of the person or persons who killed him is not established in the events depicted. The film ends with the restored family traveling back to Honduras, Rocío reunited with Miguel and Roberto, and Tim credited with shifting his career to an extra-official rescue effort that prompts legislative changes and broader international cooperation on sex trafficking investigations. The final on-screen material includes a recorded message from the actor portraying Tim Ballard thanking viewers and encouraging continued attention to the issue as credits roll.

We don't know.

We don't know.