‘The Six Billion Dollar Man’ Review: Straight-Ahead Julian Assange Doc Looks Pessimistically Toward a Post-Truth World

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The prolonged and intricate tale surrounding Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has surpassed several films about him to become almost like a historical account. Films such as Alex Gibney’s 2013 “We Steal Secrets” and Laura Poitras’ 2016 “Risk,” made during the Obama administration, are set in a political climate vastly different from our current one. These documentaries couldn’t have foreseen the escalating legal problems that would beset Assange in subsequent years. Bill Condon’s 2013 biopic “The Fifth Estate,” which portrayed Assange, felt out of touch from the start. Now, with Assange being released last year after over a decade of imprisonment or detention in the U.K., it seems fitting to provide an extensive update on this complex story: Introducing Eugene Jarecki’s straightforward yet comprehensive documentary “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” which debuted at Cannes (with Assange himself attending) as part of the Special Screenings program.

The film, titled “WikiLeaks,” traces the journey of the small startup founded in the mid-2000s and its significant influence on both media and politics. It follows a mostly chronological path as different governments attempt to suppress and silence its founder, Julian Assange. The story concludes with his return to Australia in 2024 after five years in a high-security British prison, following a negotiated deal with U.S. prosecutors. Unlike any other ongoing news story, Assange’s tale features a diverse cast of characters, from Donald Trump and Pamela Anderson to a teenage hacker from Iceland, who could easily overshadow the main narrative. However, Jarecki tells this captivating true story with the same investigative, dry yet furious intensity he used in his 2005 documentary “Why We Fight” and his 2012 film “The House I Live In.

The Six Billion Dollar Man,” as a documentary, presents a systematic compilation of existing facts rather than an expository investigation. Although it may serve as an enlightening experience for younger viewers who were less informed about news events 15 years ago and have grown accustomed to the complex and fragmented digital media landscape, it is essentially traditional non-fiction filmmaking. The film utilizes archival footage, such as videos from Assange’s seven-year asylum in Ecuador’s compact London embassy, along with commentary from a variety of Assange’s associates, peers, and journalistic counterparts. A peculiar stylistic choice in this production is the inclusion of chapter headings that reference “Star Wars” movies, starting with “A New Hope” and “The Empire Strikes Back,” before unexpectedly abandoning the theme two entries later.

One of the individuals being interviewed is cultural critic Naomi Klein, who discusses how WikiLeaks emerged from an early, more altruistic version of the internet before the advent of social media. Its original goal was to provide free access to information for everyone. Several groundbreaking journalistic achievements by the site, such as the controversial “Collateral Murder” video revealing civilians and Reuters journalists being killed in U.S. airstrikes in Baghdad in 2007, caused a stir by exposing unjust or corrupt actions by those in power. However, the aftermath of these revelations often led to attacks on the messenger rather than addressing the issues at hand. The U.S. government, in particular, attempted to portray Assange as a criminal for not ignoring their mistakes and transgressions. Famed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden questions this situation by asking, “If we’ve been deceived, wouldn’t it be better to know the truth?

In simpler terms, Snowden poses questions sarcastically, and as the movie progresses into the Trump era with its false news and biased right-wing propaganda, Jarecki sadly observes that many people would rather believe a lie they can support than the truth. This cultural shift contributed to Assange’s decline, initiated by rape allegations in Sweden which the accusers felt were manipulated by the police. Despite these accusations, Assange was genuinely worried about being extradited to the U.S., leading him unexpectedly to seek asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy. The offer of asylum to Assange from Ecuador is also influenced by shifting cultural trends; the film’s title refers to the amount the U.S. offered in 2019 to a more cooperative Ecuadorian government to hand over Assange.

Instead, serve a five-year prison term, much of it spent in isolation, at the notoriously harsh Belmarsh Prison in the U.K. – a place where, as asserted by UN human rights expert Nils Melzer, Assange was subjected to prolonged psychological torture, leaving him weaker and more anxious. This may explain why Assange had limited participation in Jarecki’s film. Throughout this ordeal, Julian Assange’s cause was championed by tenacious Australian human rights lawyer Jen Robinson, as well as Stella Moris, a dedicated member of his legal team who later became Assange’s wife and mother to two of his children.

In their personal interviews, they add a more intimate layer to a movie that frequently portrays Assange as a widely recognized champion – a symbol of unwavering truth-telling values amidst an era where AI, political bias, and persistent prejudice enable many to construct their own versions of reality. “We no longer value facts,” laments Klein, while Assange ends the film “The Six Billion Dollar Man” by acknowledging the concession that led to his case being dropped by the U.S. government: “I’m not here because the system functioned; I’m here because I pleaded guilty to journalism.

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2025-05-22 14:47