“Som da Liberdade” tops the box office thanks to free tickets

“Som da Liberdade” topped the Brazilian box office for the second week in a row, surpassing the premieres of “Saw X” and “Resistência”, thanks to a veritable wave of free tickets. Entities linked to evangelical churches and the police, the production company Brasil Paralelo and the American producer responsible for the film, Angel Studios, gave away tickets to see the film. The National Association of Federal Police Officers alone distributed 30 thousand tickets.

According to some, the tickets were donated by Angel herself and the distributor Paris Filmes, which makes “Som da Liberdade” the first film released in Brazil with the explicit aim of giving millions of losses to those who should profit from it. The hypothesis that it is “money laundering” is up to the police, although the most probable is third-party financing courtesy of those responsible for the launch.

After all, although they were free to the public, these tickets were billed by the movie theaters. That means someone paid.

Previously, films linked to the universal Church, such as “The Ten Commandments” and “Nothing to Lose”, also distributed by Paris, had been accused of following the same tactic, following reports of distribution of tickets by pastors and empty sessions, in which all tickets had been sold. The difference is that now everything is done explicitly, with companies handing out tickets publicly over the Internet.

Controversial success

Just like in the United States, the success of “Sound of Freedom”, which chronicles the life of Tim Ballard, is driven by the country’s right-wing groups. Originally, the film was financed by right-wing individual investors, and gained momentum when it received support from figures such as former President Donald Trump. Even without the support of major film studios, the production has achieved great success in appealing to this segment, partly due to its alignment with worldviews propagated by conspiracy theories such as QAnon, the main delusion of the US far right.

The plot focuses on Ballard’s tireless quest to reunite a family separated by human trafficking. He initially saves a boy named Miguel at the US-Mexico border and later discovers that Miguel’s sister is still missing. This leads him to Cartagena, where he plans a daring operation to save the girl. The film includes an epilogue scene featuring black-and-white footage of Ballard’s actual operation, although this scene is followed by a controversial mid-credits scene that has been criticized for its manipulative nature, intended to stoke war issues cultural.

As cinema, it’s a conventional action thriller in the style of feature films from the 1990s, when heroic Americans invaded the banana republics of South America to take justice into their own hands. It’s basically the premise of the first film in the “Expendables” series and the last Rambo film. The topic of child trafficking is different, presented in a captivating way and linked to the theories of the far right, which accuse the left of leading an international cartel of pedophiles. This is a fantasy derived from the cliché that “communists eat little children.”

Complaints against the film

There are some ironies in the thesis defended by the film, since one of its financiers, Fabian Marta, turned out to be a right-wing pedophile, arrested for participating in child trafficking. Defenders of the film claim that it was just one of many crowdfunders, claiming this in the same breath as they generalize the entire left as pedophilia.

But there’s more. Shortly after the release of the production, seven women reported the real Tim Ballard for sexual abuse. They said Ballard used the excuse of fighting child trafficking to convince them to pose as his wives on infiltration missions, forcing them to have sexual relations.

From this point of view, “The Sound of Freedom” would be a film financed by a pedophile about the life of a sexual predator.

Source: Terra

Rose

Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.