Remember Julian Assange? 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.
According to this documentary by Australian film-maker Kym Staton, Assange has been subject to a coordinated smear campaign. It argues that the 2010 rape allegations against Assange by two Swedish women were “trumped up” – although given that we only hear one side of the argument, it is impossible for viewers to come to any informed conclusion on a complex case. (Assange was never formally charged and the investigation was closed in 2019.)
That’s an issue throughout this two-hour film. Certainly Assange’s fears of extradition to the US if he went to Sweden were well founded, hence his skipping bail and seeking refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he lived for seven years. 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.
Again, the arguments are complex in terms of legal process and freedom of expression, and this documentary is only really interested in making the case for Assange’s defence. There is no mention, for example, of WikiLeaks’ role in leaking the Democratic National Committee emails in 2016 that harmed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and paved the way for Donald Trump’s election.
Whatever the case, there remains the glaring fact that Assange has been criminally charged for leaking information, while those who committed the considerably greater crimes of fabricating the pretext for the Iraq war then conducting it so brutally, including through torture, rendition and extrajudicial killings, go entirely unpunished. In bringing this argument to a rousing conclusion, however, this film overstates its case somewhat, with an extended series of dreamlike animated montages, backed by florid, almost biblical prose read by the likes of Roger Waters, Tom Morello and MIA: “He channelled leaks through a stream of innovation, along a river of diligence, to a lake of truth.”
The jury is literally out on Assange – in that there’s little prospect of him receiving justice any time soon – and that’s really the problem (or, if you like, the plan). The film is admirable, if entirely one-sided, in its sincere commitment, but its persuasiveness will really depend on where you already stand on the issues.
• The Trust Fall: Julian Assange is in UK cinemas from 15 March, and is screening now in Australian cinemas.
