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Former President Donald Trump will host a screening of the surprise box-office success “Sound of Freedom” at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club next week amid controversy over the film’s release.
The based-on-a-true-story film focuses on a federal agent’s dangerous mission to save children from pedophiles and prostitution rings in Colombia. But the movie’s star, “Passion of the Christ” actor Jim Caviezel, has previously been accused of promoting right-wing QAnon conspiracy theories, and some critics have said the movie overstates the realities of child trafficking.
Nevertheless, the independent, partially crowd-funded film has been embraced by right-wing media figures like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson and a loyal fanbase. Critics, meanwhile, have been fierce: Rolling Stone called the film, “A superhero movie for dads with brainworms,” and The Guardian named the movie the “QAnon-adjacent thriller seducing America.”
Trump will be accompanied at the screening by Caviezel as well as actor Eduardo Verástegui and Tim Ballard, the former Department of Homeland Security agent who inspired the film.
Verástegui was previously appointed to Trump’s advisory commission on Hispanic prosperity in 2020, while Ballard was invited to the White House in 2019 to talk about the importance of a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
“[Verástegui] has continuously advocated for a strong and vital bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Mexico” and “emphasized the importance of coming together as a society to address this pernicious evil and eradicate child trafficking,” the Trump campaign said in a statement Thursday.
The screening of the film will be attended by club members and supporters, according to the Trump campaign.
The Angel Studios feature has done well at the box office, scoring the number one spot in Texas, Arizona, and Florida theaters and performing well across middle America on its July 4 opening weekend, despite having a production budget a fraction of the size of competing summer blockbusters.