Latest news with #JulianAssange
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What Does The Cannes Film Festival Have Against Documentaries?
Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Frémaux entered the room with a martial bearing, his square jaw tilted upwards in the manner of a man who need not doubt his significance. He came to the Salon des Ambassadeurs within the Palais to make a few remarks before the awarding of the annual l'Oeil d'or (Golden Eye) award for the festival's top documentary, as selected by a jury. Before an audience of perhaps a hundred or more nonfiction film lovers, he stated what must be considered unquestionable: More from Deadline 'Imago' Wins L'Oeil d'Or Prize For Top Documentary At Cannes; Julian Assange Film Wins Special Jury Prize For l'Oeil d'Or 10th Anniversary 'The Six Billion Dollar Man' Review: Timely Documentary Shows Julian Assange As Truth Teller Fighting Against Authoritarian Drift – Cannes Film Festival Patrick Wachsberger's 193 Locks Post-Cannes Deals On Multiple Pics Including 'Die My Love' & Colman Domingo's Directorial Debut 'Scandalous!' 'Documentaries are a minority within the Cannes Film Festival. There have been documentaries in the past, but very few,' Frémaux acknowledged, before adding, 'But it's true that over the past few years, there have been many more.' He went on to say, '[With] your minority status, you can always feel a little oppressed. You are not. I can reassure you right away that there is proof. The proof, this prize; the proof, this jury, these people who are here.' Those comforting sentiments aside, it's hard to argue with the evidence that Cannes sees documentary as secondary within the septième art, or 7th Art, as the French sometimes call cinema. Of the more than 20 films selected for official competition, not a single one was a documentary. Given that only films In Competition are eligible for the Palme d'or, that means nonfiction films came in with no chance of winning the festival's most coveted prize. (In Cannes history only two docs have won the Palme d'or – in 2004, for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, which was probably awarded more for the film's political message than its cinematic qualities; and in 1956 for The Silent World, the oceanographic film directed by Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle). Two years ago, it appeared Cannes might be turning a corner in its view of documentary as cinema – inviting not one but two nonfiction films to screen in Competition: Kaouther Ben Hania's Four Daughters and Wang Bing's Youth (Spring). But then last year it reverted to form, omitting any docs from Competition, a pattern repeated this year. Before 2023, it had been almost 20 years – the Fahrenheit 9/11 year – that Cannes had deigned to admit a documentary to Competition. Venice and Berlin, the two other most prestigious European festivals, have displayed much less tendency to segregate documentary from fictional cinema. Indeed, the Berlinale's Golden Bear has gone to a documentary three times in the last decade: Dahomey, directed by Mati Diop (2024); On the Adamant, directed by Nicolas Philibert (2023), and Fire at Sea, directed by Gianfranco Rosi (2016). Jafar Panahi's Taxi, sometimes described as docufiction, won the Golden Bear in 2015. In 2022, the Golden Lion – Venice's top prize – went to the documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, directed by Laura Poitras. Going back to cinema's roots in the late 19th century, the first projected films were essentially documentaries – often referred to as 'actualities' back then. Among them were very brief shorts directed by the French Lumière Brothers – Auguste and Louis – 'Exiting the Lumière Factory in Lyon' (1895) and 'Fishing for Goldfish' (1895). Nanook of the North, the 1922 silent directed by Robert Flaherty, is considered the first documentary feature. Dziga Vertov's documentary Man with a Movie Camera (1929) has been voted one of the greatest movies of all time – nonfiction or fiction. Cannes' l'Oeil d'or prize has only been around for 10 years. This year, the honor went to Imago, directed by Chechen filmmaker Déni Oumar Pitsaev, a film that premiered in Critics Week (Semaine de la Critique) the unofficial Cannes sidebar. 'It's nice that there are more and more documentaries in Cannes,' Pitsaev told me after winning the l'Oeil d'or, 'but it's maybe time that we're not in the back room, but that it's considered just cinema. Wasn't cinema born in documentary as well?' Un Certain Regard, an official Cannes sidebar, likewise gave no love to docs. 'It's 20 films,' Pitsaev noted, 'and no documentaries.' The Critics Week jury, comprised of Oscar-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya and others, awarded the French Touch Prize to Imago, praising its subtlety: 'It observes but never insists, listens but never forces, captures but never encloses.' The film was edited by Laurent Sénéchal, the Oscar-nominated editor of Anatomy of a Fall, and fellow award winner Dounia Sichov. Pitsaev said he always meant the film to be cinematic (and thus worthy to be in the company of scripted films). 'The film was financed as a work of cinema, not just a documentary,' he said. 'The film was also helped by Arte Cinema, not just Television, but Arte Cinema. People typically ask me, 'When is it going to be on TV?' and I just remind them first it's going to be a theatrical release, so end of October it's going to be released in cinemas in France. We're more than happy that people can see the film on a big screen as it was planned. All the collective of the image and also sound, all the work we did, it's done for cinema, to have the full theatrical experience.' Cannes does have a section partly devoted to documentary films – Cannes Classics, which programs nonfiction films oriented towards cinema history, directors, and actors. This year's lineup included Welcome to Lynchland, a film about David Lynch directed by Stéphane Ghez; Bo Being Bo Widerberg, a doc about the Swedish filmmaker directed by Jon Asp and Mattias Nohrborg, and Slauson Rec, a film about Shai LaBeouf's free theater company in L.A. directed by Leo Lewis O'Neil. Cannes also slated a couple of documentaries in other sections. Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5, Raoul Peck's film about author George Orwell, bowed as a 'Cannes Premiere,' and The Six Billion Dollar Man, Eugene Jarecki's documentary about Julian Assange and Wikileaks, was slotted as a 'Special Screening.' The Six Billion Dollar Man won a Special Jury Prize in honor of the 10th anniversary of l'Oeil d'or. 'I do think this is a seismic development within the Cannes Film Festival, my movie aside,' Jarecki told me after winning the award. 'Just the fact that you can feel the festival leaning into documentary much more than ever before, leaning into the serious issues that are flying around the world right now. If you look at what showed at the festival this year, the dedication of the festival to Fatima [Hassouna, a Palestinian photojournalist killed in Gaza], there's extremely important stuff going on. And I think the way the psyche of the festival has shifted, we need that… We need more and more people to step up and get concerned and get engaged. And I came here not knowing what to expect of that, of how a festival of poetry and fantasy and romance would be dealing with a modern era where we all have such grave concerns, and they're leaning into it.' If Jarecki is right and Cannes takes a more serious turn in the direction of documentary, it can demonstrate that by selecting nonfiction films for Competition. We'll see if that happens in 2026. Comme disons les français, on verra. On the basis of past history, I would argue Cannes remains all about poetry, fantasy, and romance as embodied by the spectacle of the red carpet (le tapis rouge) and the stars ascending the stairs to the Palais, where they are typically greeted by Thierry Frémaux. That's the beating heart of Cannes. Documentaries, for the most part, lack the inherent glamour that constitutes Cannes' true identity. Best of Deadline Everything We Know About 'Stranger Things' Season 5 So Far 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery
Daily Tribune
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Tribune
Chechen film, Assange documentary win prizes in Cannes
The first Chechen film to screen at the Cannes Festival won best documentary, while a film about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange picked up a special prize on Friday. Deni Oumar Pitsaev won the festival's Golden Eye award for his autobiographical documentary Imago, which follows the filmmaker after he inherits a small patch of land in the Pankisi valley in Georgia, across the border from Chechnya in southern Russia. During the two Chechen wars of 1994–1996 and 1999–2009, the region became a refuge for Chechen rebels and thousands of civilian refugees who crossed Georgia's porous mountain border to flee the conflict. Pitsaev — who grew up between Grozny, Saint Petersburg and Almaty, and is now based between Brussels and Paris — was also awarded a prize in the festival's Critics' Week section on Wednesday. US director Eugene Jarecki was awarded a special jury prize for his documentary The Six Billion Dollar Man, about Assange, who has been in Cannes to promote the film but has not yet spoken publicly. Assange has declined all interview requests, but the 53-year-old former hacker's wife, Stella Assange, said he had 'recovered' from his years in detention and would 'speak when he's ready.' Assange was released from a high-security British prison in June last year after a plea bargain with the US government over WikiLeaks's work publishing top-secret military and diplomatic information. He spent five years behind bars fighting extradition from Britain and another seven holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London, where he claimed political asylum.
ABC News
25-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
New charity connected to Julian Assange will help other whistleblowers facing persecution
A new charity connected to wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been launched to support whistleblowers, writers and activists who face persecution for sharing confidential information in the public domain. The new charity is called The Information Rights Project and is designed to offer advocacy, education and other practical support to those not just in Australia but worldwide. Guest: Gabriel Shipton, brother of Julian Assange, and founder of the Information Rights Project Producer: Anne Barker
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Cannes: Eugene Jarecki on Why ‘Six Billion Dollar Man' Subject Julian Assange is 'Probably Not Dr. Evil'
For over a decade, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been a lightning rod in the global debate over press freedom, transparency and the reach of U.S. power. From the release of the notorious 'Collateral Murder' video to his years-long exile inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange has been hailed as a journalistic freedom fighter and vilified as a national security threat. Now, with The Six Billion Dollar Man, director Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight, The House I Live In) turns his lens on what he calls 'the most consequential political prisoner of our time,' delivering a searing exposé that uncovers the staggering cost the U.S. was willing to pay to silence him. Jarecki's latest documentary is a cinematic pressure cooker — part investigative thriller, part legal procedural and part character study — that digs deep into the forces aligned against Assange. Featuring interviews with human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson, former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa and never-before-seen footage from Assange's time inside the embassy, the film traces the evolution of a man from renegade online publisher to political martyr. At the core is a revelation worthy of any geopolitical thriller: A $6.5 billion IMF loan allegedly dangled by the Trump administration to pressure Ecuador into handing Assange over — a modern bounty to bury a dissident voice. More from The Hollywood Reporter Cannes: 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' Wins Un Certain Regard Top Prize Who Really Took the Iconic "Napalm Girl" Photo? Director of New Doc Addresses the Controversy (Exclusive) Paris Court Finds Ringleader, Seven Others Guilty in 2016 Robbery of Kim Kardashian The Six Billion Dollar Man premiered as a special screening in Cannes Wednesday night, with Assange in the audience. It's already a multi-award winner, having received the first-ever Golden Globe Award for best documentary on Monday, and, on Friday, took the special jury prize of the L'Oeil d'or, or Golden Eye, awards, Cannes' documentary film honors. Jarecki, who has long chronicled abuses of American power, doesn't mince words. He describes the case as 'shattering,' a prism through which to examine how democracies betray their own ideals. In a discussion at the American Pavilion in Cannes, Eugene Jarecki spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about weaponized propaganda, the perils of truth-telling in the digital age and how a man once seen as 'Dr. Evil' by the U.S. government made it to the red carpet. What first drew you to the story of Julian Assange? It's a delight to bring Mr. Assange to the red carpet. It's probably the greatest achievement of my life, because it's so important that someone like Julian Assange, who was the target of so much deeply corrupt propaganda, is finally being seen in a different light. When we started, he was in Belmarsh Prison, Britain's Guantanamo Bay. The idea that this inmate would be here in Cannes, a free man, was unthinkable. We asked: Why is this man in jail? Recognized as a journalist by The New York Times, the Nobel prize committee, journalism outlets all over the world — and he's in a prison full of terrorists and violent criminals? We might have found he did something really bad. Maybe the propaganda is true. It was our job to get to the heart of it. Then the case became more startling, the evidence more shattering. Especially what it tells us about those in power — that they were willing to spend $6 billion as a bounty on a man's head. How do you think Julian Assange has been misrepresented in the mainstream narrative? The U.S. engaged in a vast smear operation against Assange. It involved allies like the U.K. and Sweden. He was given asylum by Ecuador under President Rafael Correa. Under his successor, the country was paid $6 billion to hurt Mr. Assange. Companies like PayPal and Visa stopped payments to WikiLeaks. I used to think they liked when we made transfers — don't they profit from that? All of a sudden capitalism went out the window. Allegations were spread that he had been guilty of a sexual offense in Sweden. We looked into that. There never was a sexual case. There was an inquiry, which was dropped. But nobody ever knows that. Once you say 'sexual this' or 'sexual that,' it follows someone for the rest of their life. The U.S. buried Assange in propaganda until someone who did that much for humanity either became unknown or had a black cloud over him. Saturday Night Live once did a bit with Bill Hader playing Assange as Dr. Evil. That sums up what the U.S. did to him. What's my job? I'm a documentary filmmaker. I didn't see Assange during the filmmaking process. He was in jail. I dealt with him as a public figure on my editing screen. I'm not going to present him as an angel, but he's probably not Dr. Evil. Your film presents a more positive image of Julian Assange than, for example, Laura Poitras did in her . In fairness to other filmmakers, the groundbreaking information just wasn't available to them. In our case, because he was in jail, he didn't have access to me, and I didn't have access to him, so my personal feelings didn't get in the way. I had 11 years of secretly-filmed surveillance footage from the embassy. I watched hundreds of hours and most of what I saw was that Assange is not what the public has been led to believe. His actions speak for themselves. He's had 15 years of detention. That speaks highly of a person, even if they're not great with their cat or lack social skills. If I had found evidence that he committed a sexual offense or violated people in war, I would have had to reflect that. But I didn't. What I saw was a single individual with a team of idealistic young people going up against a superpower. The film also shows how both Democratic and Republican administrations treated Assange as public enemy no. 1. You include the WikiLeaks release of Hillary Clinton's emails. How do you respond to the allegation that you're doing Trump's bidding by supporting Assange and criticizing the Democrats? This answer has three parts. First, yesterday [May 19] was the 100th birthday of Malcolm X. We're at a festival featuring a film about someone who was killed after making a political film [Gaza photojournalist Fatma Hassona, featured in Sepideh Farsi's Cannes documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hands and Walk]. These are people who are fearless in the face of danger. Assange is one of them. He doesn't stop when reasonable people would back down. When he was already in trouble, you'd think he'd want to curry favor with Democrats. Everyone believed Hillary would win. If he wanted to play it safe, he wouldn't have released what Hillary did to Bernie Sanders — which is all they released. Many people confuse that with Benghazi or the private server. That's propaganda. They didn't release that. WikiLeaks only published what Americans should want to know: that the Democratic nominee got there with blood on her hands. The DNC made it impossible for Bernie [Sanders] to compete. What kind of world would we be living in now if they hadn't buried him? Julian Assange did not do the politic thing. He didn't protect power. When Democrats lost, they said the Russians did it. America always has someone to blame — Russians, Muslims — to distract from what we do to overthrow democracy around the world. WikiLeaks was given that information. They didn't hack anything. The New York Times said what WikiLeaks did was newsworthy and correctly timed. And if they had Trump's tax returns, they would have released them. They're anti-power, not pro-Trump. We investigated every possible lead about Russian involvement. Every lead led back to Democrats' mouths. I found no evidence linking WikiLeaks to Russia, beyond Hillary calling it 'Russian WikiLeaks' on TV — a way of saying: I didn't lose because of me, I lost because someone took it from me. Dr. Evil and his friend in Russia. What did it take to get Julian Assange to Cannes, as a free man? The difficulty was for his legal team to beat the U.S. government. He's a free man because they won one of the most seismic victories in American law. The U.S. dropped 17 of 18 charges. He was facing 175 years. The last charge — the one he pled guilty to — was 'journalism.' He pled guilty to acting as a journalist under the First Amendment. But there's another law in America that goes against the First Amendment: the Espionage Act. And that's what they used. America pretended it was the seat of modern democracy. But now it's jailing a journalist. He got five years for that. And so he's here because they struggled to reach that outcome, and he emerged triumphant. I think Cannes is doing something extraordinary. The festival is more and more allowing politics into the curriculum, and I think that's beautiful. I'm proud to be a part of that. [Cannes Festival director] Thierry Frémaux and Christian Jeune [director of the film department] are really taking the festival in the right direction. And then we won a Golden Globe — the first for a documentary. That's empowering, not only for this film, but for all documentaries. It shows that Julian can be seen in a golden new light. What was the personal impact of this project on you as a filmmaker? It was a long process. That affected me — in my aging, in my politics, in how I work with people. I think some of the strategies I used, in managing a team, in handling messaging, in applying ethics — they're more advanced in my soul now than when I was younger. Julian taught me to stay in it for the long haul. He was in for 15 years. I spent four-and-a-half years on this. I salute his willingness to go to the wall for a cause. Seeing him here at the festival — he's a different person than I saw in the footage all those years. After everything, does the truth still matter? Fuck yes! Best of The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV
RTÉ News
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Chechen film, Assange documentary win prizes in Cannes
The first Chechen film to screen at the Cannes Festival has won Best Documentary while a film about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has picked up a special prize. Déni Oumar Pitsaev won the festival's Golden Eye award for his autobiographical documentary Imago, which follows the filmmaker after he inherits a small patch of land in the Pankisi valley in Georgia, across the border from Chechnya in southern Russia. During the two Chechen wars of 1994-1996 and 1999-2009, the region became a refuge for Chechen rebels and thousands of civilian refugees who crossed Georgia's porous mountain border to flee the conflict. Pitsaev - who grew up between Grozny, Saint Petersburg, and Almaty, and is now based between Brussels and Paris - was also awarded a prize in the festival's Critics' Week section on Wednesday. The American director Eugene Jarecki was awarded a Special Jury Prize for his documentary The Six Billion Dollar Man, about Assange, who has been in Cannes to promote the film but has not yet spoken publicly. Assange has declined all interview requests, but the 53-year-old former hacker's wife, Stella Assange, said he had "recovered" from his years in detention and would "speak when he's ready". Assange was released from a high-security British prison in June last year after a plea bargain with the US government over WikiLeaks's work publishing top-secret military and diplomatic information. He spent five years behind bars fighting extradition from Britain and another seven in Ecuador's embassy in London, where he claimed political asylum. Jarecki said his film aimed to correct the record about Assange, whose methods and personality make him a divisive figure. "I think Julian Assange put himself in harm's way for the principle of informing the public about what corporations and governments around the world are doing in secret," he said.
