Julian Asange
The story of a man who risked everything to bring the truth to light.
Having dominated headlines in the 2010s, the WikiLeaks founder has dropped out of sight having been confined at London’s Belmarsh prison since 2019. And that was kind of the plan, this impassioned documentary asserts, with the aid of staunch defenders including the late John Pilger, Tariq Ali, Jill Stein, Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsworth and Assange family members. “The persecution of Julian has been a long, slow form of killing somebody,” says Pilger; witnessing Assange’s trajectory from a buccaneering truth-teller to a frail, mentally damaged prisoner, perpetually denied justice, it’s hard to disagree. The film documents in detail WikiLeaks’ role in exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, including graphic footage of a helicopter attack in Baghdad in 2007 that killed several innocent civilians and two Reuters photographers. And it convincingly argues that the US has sought to punish him ever since, aided by successive, supine UK and Australian governments.
Australia 2023 Kym Staton 128m
