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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
The Hindu
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
The politics of the Cannes red carpet
At Cannes, they like to say the red carpet is sacred. Each summer, the iconic crimson spread over the Palais steps at the Promenade de la Croisette becomes a catwalk for the global elite. But it has also long served as a secular altar of sorts. To cinema, yes, but also to spectacle, vanity, and power. This storied temple of celluloid indulgence often finds itself reluctantly, and sometimes gracelessly, at the intersection of art, activism, repression and revolt. And so, unsurprisingly, the carpet this year has once again turned into a vivid tableau of political tensions, sartorial censorships and cultural reckonings. It started, ostensibly, with the absence of glamour. Not in the haute couture sense, but in the more abstract disappearance of the escapist, indulgent promise of glamour. A stiffness and austerity found its way to the festival defined by these very indulgences. One might just brand it recession chic, if the mood weren't more deeply moralistic. The festival's semi-permeable bubble has often been a place where art pretends not to notice politics, only to burst into applause when the two inevitably collide. Robert De Niro, receiving a lifetime achievement award, kicked off the festival by skewering Donald Trump as a 'philistine' and called for immediate action in an impassioned speech. Jury president Juliette Binoche matched De Niro's candour with a sombre invocation of war and climate collapse. 'War, misery, climate change, primitive misogyny — the demons of our barbarities leave us no outlet.' Julian Assange, newly freed and clad in a T-shirt bearing the names of the thousands of children killed in Gaza, arrived for the premiere of The Six Billion Dollar Man, a documentary chronicling his years of persecution. Meanwhile, a letter condemning Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza circulated with hundreds of film industry signatories. Earlier, internet heartthrob and Eddington star Pedro Pascal used the post-premiere spotlight at Cannes to deliver a rallying cry. 'F**k the people that try to make you scared,' he said, voice steady but electric. 'Fear is the way that they win… Fight back. Don't let them win.' Angelina Jolie, too, lent her gravitas while speaking of slain Palestinian journalist Fatima Hassouneh, whose documentary, selected by Cannes, was eclipsed by her death in an Israeli airstrike. 'The artists and journalists around the world are risking their lives to tell the truth — often without any protection.' On the other hand, Indian model and actress Ruchi Gujjar caused a stir and a collective double-take by showing up in full bridal regalia, complete with a necklace flaunting none other than Prime Minister Modi's face as the centrepiece accessory. And Aishwarya Rai arrived sporting an ivory sari, with a streak of vermillion sindoor down the part of her hair read as a not-so-subtle nationalist salute to India's recent eponymous military action in Pakistan. These statements echo an already rich history of symbolism and protest at Cannes: from Cate Blanchett's green-lined gown at last year's premiere of The Apprentice (interpreted as a nod to the Palestinian flag), to Iranian model Mahlagha Jaberi's noose-like collar protesting Iran's executions following the Mahsa Amini protests, to Bella Hadid's keffiyeh-scarved dress and Kani Kusruti's watermelon clutch. Stylistic choices have long functioned as encrypted political dispatches. A fresh crop of self-styled Indian influencers descended upon the Croisette this year as well, and some in Bollywood are clutching their pearls in dismay. The enclave of auteur prestige now teems with content creators striking brand-sponsored poses beside Palme d'Or contenders, and the resulting backlash has revealed a peculiar form of elitism cloaked in the language of cinematic sanctity. A lightning rod in this influencer-versus-artist standoff this year was Kusha Kapila, who was forced to defend her presence last year after being dismissed as a 'random celebrity.' The term quite neatly encapsulates how threatened traditionalists feel when these supposed 'gatecrashers' come bearing brand deals instead of selections from the Criterion closet. Yet, as comedian Vir Das has now astutely pointed out, it's hard to cry 'sacrilege' while simultaneously promoting your film on influencer podcasts. The real tension isn't about art, but about access. Cannes is no longer just a cinephile's most prestigious fête, but also a business convention in vogue. But the politics of the festival has now begun reigning in those very aesthetic sensibilities as well. This is infamously the year Cannes has tightened its corset, literally and figuratively. The new ban on nudity and voluminous gowns, in a thinly veiled nod to 'decency', has already left stylists and stars scrambling. Once delighting in sheer chiffon and the slow-motion drama of a trailing hem, the red carpet's archaic crackdown has banished the oxymoronic naked dresses. The very act of looking — of dressing, undressing, and being seen — has become fraught. The new dress code has ostensibly been about safety, but is increasingly being read as a curtsy to cultural conservatism. The irony of audiences routinely being treated to ample (and predominantly female) on-screen nudity — usually in service of narratives that might label themselves 'bold', 'progressive' or 'unflinching' — seems to be quite lost on the organisers. Outside, women are told to behave, but inside, their bodies remain fair game. But this is not a new tension, and Cannes has tried, with limited success, to manage the optics. Think back to 2018's silent protest, when 82 women — including Blanchett, Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux and more — stood on the steps demanding gender parity in cinema. Or Salma Hayek's 2014 moment, when she held a placard reading #BringBackOurGirls, demanding action on the Nigerian schoolgirl kidnappings. Or in 2023, when Ukrainian influencer Ilona Chernobai doused herself in fake blood after climbing the Palais steps in the colours of her national flag. Cannes has long trafficked in a paradox. It has historically been both a fiercely French sanctuary for difficult, edgy art and a megaphone for the frivolous. Yet this year, the contrasts have become frustratingly hard to ignore. Critics have pointed to the whiplash-inducing contradiction of Cannes' past: the same institution that banned flats in 2015 and once rebuked burkinis has historically unfurled its carpet for the likes of Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. This year, Cannes' oft-embattled delegate general Thierry Frémaux banned actor Théo Navarro-Mussy from attending the premiere of Dossier 137 after multiple allegations of sexual assault. Though the move finally aligned the festival with the French César Academy's zero-tolerance policy, sceptics pointed out the convenient timing. In past years, Frémaux dismissed such criticisms as 'false', but with Gérard Depardieu's fresh conviction blessing the festival's opening and making France's #MeToo reckoning impossible to ignore, the festival seems to be playing catch-up. Yet still, this reckoning remains astonishingly uneven. So far, Kevin Spacey has been honoured by a charity operating on Cannes' periphery. Ezra Miller was spotted ducking flashbulbs on the Die, My Love carpet, James Franco was spotted flashing a smile on the Vie Privée carpet, and Shia LaBeouf quietly slipped into a screening about his 'experimental' theatre school. For all the talk of propriety, Cannes has yet to articulate a consistent standard for dealing with alleged abusers. Up until now, it's been caught between the old guard's nostalgia and the younger generation's insistence on accountability. Amid the awkward contortions of a struggling institution, the films, thankfully, still matter. But to everyone watching, the festival is no longer just about cinema. It never really was. Perhaps that is the final, most uncomfortable truth about an event as lavish and opulent as Cannes. That to even walk the red carpet, debate dress codes, and bask in the glory of ovations, is a kind of privilege. To attend is to indulge in a curated fantasy that floats above the bloodied headlines of atrocities unfolding in real time. And maybe that's the lingering paradox Cannes can never quite smooth over. The sheer misguidedness of convening in couture while the world convulses just beyond the velvet rope.
Express Tribune
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Assange unveils Cannes film
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has "recovered" from his years in detention, his wife told AFP, as a new documentary about him premiered at the Cannes film festival on Wednesday. Assange is at the world's biggest film festival to promote The Six Billion Dollar Man by American director Eugene Jarecki but is not yet speaking publicly. After posing for photographers on Tuesday wearing a T-shirt with the names of killed Gaza children, he reappeared Wednesday for the red-carpet screening wearing a black tuxedo. The 53-year-old former hacker has declined all interview requests, however, with his wife Stella Assange saying that "he'll speak when he's ready." But she was upbeat about his health and said he was already thinking about his next steps. "We live with incredible nature at our doorstep (in Australia). Julian's very outdoorsy. He always has been. He's really recovered physically and mentally," Stella, a Spanish-Swedish lawyer, told AFP. Assange was released from a high-security British prison last June 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 the Ecuador embassy in London where he claimed political asylum. 'Right side of history' Award-winning director 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," Jarecki told AFP. Anyone willing to trade years of their life for their principles, "I think you'd have to look at that person as having heroic qualities," he added. The film includes never-seen footage, including personal videos handed over by Stella, a Wikileaks lawyer who had two children with Assange while he was living in the Ecuadorian embassy. It also features testimony from people who helped spy on Assange, including an Icelandic FBI informant and a private security agent who said he installed bugs accessed by US security services in the Ecuadorian embassy. Ecuador's left-wing former president Rafael Correa, who offered Assange asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, also attended Wednesday's screening. "I believe we were on the right side of history," he told AFP. Jarecki's film seeks to address criticism of Assange, notably that he endangered lives by publishing unredacted US documents which included the names of people who had spoken to American diplomats or spies. 'Complete fabrication' The film extensively features supportive figures, while giving little time to opposing views. Baywatch actor and Assange friend Pamela Anderson makes an appearance, as does American whistleblower Edward Snowden, and left-wing Greek ex-minister Yanis Varifakis who compares the Wikileaks founder to Greek god Prometheus. The film lays the blame for the publication of a trove of 251,000 US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks in 2011 on veteran investigative British journalist David Leigh, alleging he published the password to access the database. Leigh, who collaborated with Assange while working at the Guardian newspaper, told AFP he had never been contacted by Jarecki and he called the theory "a complete fabrication". "It was Julian and Julian alone who did it. He's been trying to find an excuse ever since," he said by phone. Jarecki also dismissed any links between Wikileaks and Russian intelligence services over the leak of Democratic Party emails ahead of the 2016 US presidential election which embarrassed Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. An investigation by US special counsel Robert Mueller, who probed alleged Russian interference in the 2016 vote, found evidence that Russian military intelligence hacked the Democratic Party and passed the information to Wikileaks. The documentary also examines the role of Swedish prosecutors in starting a sexual assault investigation into Assange, concluding that there was no case to answer. Jodie Foster on leaving US Meanwhile, speaking at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, Oscar-winning actor Jodie Foster told Reuters that she prefers to be outside the United States right now, citing better conditions in Europe's film industry as well as more freedom now that her children have grown up. Foster was in southern France for the premiere of A Private Life, a psychological thriller in which Foster assumes the role of a psychiatrist who tasks herself with investigating the death of her patient, played by Virginie Efira. The US-born actor, who won two Oscars for The Accused in 1989 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1992, had to speak in French only for the Cannes film that is screening out of competition. Foster, 62, began her career filming commercials at the age of 3 and has received numerous awards throughout her career, including an honorary Palme d'Or award from Cannes in 2021. "I'm really enjoying working outside the United States," she said, recalling how she is not as tied down to the US now as she was when her children were little and she had to stay close to home. Foster, who first came to Cannes as a 13-year-old when she starred in Taxi Driver, said working as a director in France was better than in the US because of more creative freedom. Blending genres, like director Rebecca Zlotowski does in Foster's new film, is very uncommon in the US, she said. Studios want a film to be either a thriller or a comedy, they don't want a mixture of the two, she said, whereas France allows the director to have more authority on such decisions. "That's the reason why filmmakers love to come here." In Europe, female directors also have had more opportunities compared with the US, said Foster, herself a director. "I'd only worked with one female director until a few years ago. Isn't that kind of amazing? After I've made 60 movies that I've barely ever worked with another woman?" she said. "Europe has always had a female tradition, or at least for quite a while. But in America, somehow that bias really took hold."
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Iranian Director Saeed Roustayee on Making ‘Woman and Child' With a Government Permit and Hijabs: I Wouldn't ‘Have Been Able to Make a Film of This Scale Underground'
Iranian director Saeed Roustayee is back in Cannes with 'Woman and Child,' a female empowerment drama premiering in competition. The film follows a 40-year-old widowed nurse named Mahnaz, who is struggling with a rebellious son and other complications in a heavily oppressive patriarchal context. Roustayee's new work segues from the somewhat similarly themed 'Leila's Brothers,' which launched from Cannes in 2022 and led to the director being sentenced to jail time for screening the film without government approval, though Roustayee did not go behind bars. More from Variety Elle Fanning Declares 'Joachim Trier Summer' at Cannes Amid 'Sentimental Value' Raves, Says She's 'Grown in My Autonomy and Speaking Up' as an Actor 'The Six Billion Dollar Man' Review: Straight-Ahead Julian Assange Doc Looks Pessimistically Toward a Post-Truth World Paul Mescal Says Movies Are 'Moving Away' From 'Alpha' Male Leads, Calls It 'Lazy and Frustrating' to Compare 'History of Sound' to 'Brokeback Mountain' Paradoxically, even before 'Woman and Child' screened, the film came under fire — sight unseen — from some Iranian industry circles. They claimed that Roustayee sold out to the Iranian government because he produced the film with their permission, and also due to the fact that the women on screen all wear hijabs — which is not a realistic depiction of the current state of affairs given the widespread ongoing rebellion against the mandatory hijab rule across the country. Roustayee has been passionately defended against these accusations by fellow Iranian helmer Mohammad Rasoulof, who in May 2024 escaped from Iran to Europe after receiving a jail sentence from the country's authorities for making 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig,' which premiered at Cannes with the director in tow last year. Below, Roustayee speaks to Variety about navigating the complexities of moviemaking in his turbulent country and why he's not a sell out. After 'Leila's Brothers,' you've made another film about female empowerment. Is it fair to say you feel this theme has a special urgency, especially in Iran? Actually, 'Woman and Child' is my third film in a row that is really centered around women. And, if you notice, the female protagonists of these three films become gradually more and more independent. So whereas in 'Leila's Brothers,' Leila was independent but still counted on her brothers – she asked them to do things and so on – the protagonist of this film is completely set free of the borders that have been created for her. She acts alone. She decides alone. She decides when to forgive. She takes her revenge alone. She doesn't count on anyone. She doesn't ask for anyone's help, and she arrives to redemption alone also. The protagonist, Mahnaz, played by Parinaz Izadyar, is a struggling 40-something single mom. Do you consider her emblematic of what many Iranian women are going through today? Yes, I think there are many women like Mahnaz in Iran today. In fact, I can think of at least 10 of them around me in my personal life. I've sort of put them together, drawn inspiration from each one of them to create the character of Mahnaz. There are so many independent, often single, mothers in Iran today who have one, two, three children whom they support single-handedly. And indeed, similarly, we have many women who, in fact, support their own husbands. So it's even a question of economic independence, not just spiritual and practical independence. I always think of my job, or my filmmaking, this way. I learn from society in order to make films. I can't make films that don't draw most of their inspiration from society. Of course, then I add a bit of imagination. But I can't make a film about something that I haven't actually experienced or seen firsthand. This film sparked criticism even before being seen due to the fact that the women who appear in it are veiled. You have already made a statement about this, but can you talk to me about this choice? Shortly after 'Leila's Brothers' came out, the Women, Life, Freedom revolt took place in Iran, a movement spearheaded by women, but that gradually came to involve society as a whole. And it's a movement that, by the way, I've supported publicly. You can see that on my Instagram page, but also in terms of how I behave in society. One of the consequences of this movement is that it made people and the cinema industry much more sensitive about the whole matter of the mandatory headscarf in cinema. People were already sensitive about it and then it became even hotter as a topic. I've been observed very closely ever since 'Leila's Brothers' came out. As you may know, I've had court proceedings. The film has been accused of being one of the reasons that sparked the movement. And I was given a suspended six month prison sentence and five-year work ban, which means that if I make the slightest faux pas, I go immediately to prison and I can't make a film for five years. Whereas I certainly don't like showing women with headscarves in private spaces in Iran, I feel that there is much more attention focused on this at the moment and it was the only way I had to tell a story, considering the amount of surveillance. That, of course, involves everyone in Iranian cinema. All directors are being closely watched, but I'm under very close observation. To give you an example, during the shoot of 'Woman and Child,' production was actually shut down by the regime several times and I was brought in for questioning. Izadyar, the actress who plays the protagonist, gives a real tour-de-force performance. Talk to me about working with her on this film. I had a great experience working with Parinaz. I was looking for an actress who would dedicate at least six months to non-stop rehearsals, who would have both that type of availability and also generosity. Perinaz devoted, if not an entire year, at least 10 months without taking on any other jobs just to rehearse and then interpret Mahnaz. What was the rehearsal process like? It was very intense. We rehearsed every day in my production studio, at least eight hours a day, often 10 or even 16. And what I really wanted was an actress who would transform into the character of Mahnaz. So by the end, Perinaz, the actress was no longer Perinoz. She was Mahnaz, even in her personal life, even in her family life. You could see that by the time we got to the shoot. Yes, of course, there was mise- en-scene work, there was prepping, there was all of that. But she was already under the skin of the character. The process was so intense for her that her hair gradually became gray as the shoot progressed. At the end of the shoot, she had so many natural grays that we had to dye those black for continuity reasons. As I understand it, this film was shot with a permit, meaning that the screenplay was submitted for approval after your conviction and major opposition to your previous film. Can you talk to me about the process of getting it approved and getting it made? Regarding the choice to ask for a film permit to start with, this was not my choice. It's something that you have to do if you want to make a film on this scale. And I'd like to premise this by saying that if the situation were different in Iran, if we were in a country without a mandatory headscarf and without many other restrictions, I would've made the same film. Some of the details would have been different, maybe, in terms of what happens in private and certainly the women would be without the headscarf. But the story, the character journey and all of that would have been the same. In terms of shooting a film that is set largely in a hospital, largely in exteriors, that includes scenes shot in a high-school and so on, there's no way we could have made that without permits. And again, it was very difficult for me to get permits because I don't have a good reputation with the regime officials. They view me very badly. However, I'm very popular among the wider audience. And that's another reason why it was very important to me to make a film with permits, because it's the only way it can actually be screened in Iranian cinemas. And for me to show my films to Iranian audiences in Iranian cinemas is crucial. Especially because over the past few years, what you see in Iranian cinemas has really gone down the drain. There's a series of comedies, which I'd rather not talk about. But in terms of social cinema, it has basically disappeared. And then also lots of my cast and crew are people who are working in films made with permits. So if they were to come and work in a film without a permit, then they would be punished with the same work ban that I have been punished with, though the ban has been suspended. So it would cause lots of other problems. Now, of course, there are filmmakers making underground films without permits in Iran, who I have enormous respect for. And not just filmmakers, also casts and crews. But I don't see how I would have been able to make a film of this scale underground. I mean, it just would have been impossible. Now that 'Woman and Child' is completed, do you think it has good chances of playing in movie theaters in Iran? It all depends on how we play it from now on. [Iranian authorities] have to see the completed film. It will be seen at Cannes, and it also depends on what I say, on how I give interviews. If I say anything too oppositional, the film will not pass muster. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Six Billion Dollar Man' Review: Straight-Ahead Julian Assange Doc Looks Pessimistically Toward a Post-Truth World
The saga of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has dragged on long enough, and complicatedly enough, to render a number of past films about him, if not obsolete, clear period pieces. Documentaries like Alex Gibney's 2013 'We Steal Secrets' and Laura Poitras' 2016 'Risk,' both produced during the Obama era, are informed by a very different political climate from the one we're in now — while neither could have anticipated how the Australian editor and activist's legal difficulties would escalate in the years to come. (Bill Condon's technothriller-styled 2013 Assange biopic 'The Fifth Estate,' meanwhile, felt premature from the get-go.) With Assange finally freed last year after 12 years of confinement or outright imprisonment in the U.K., the time feels right for an expansive catch-up on the whole knotty affair: Enter Eugene Jarecki's plainly presented but detail-packed documentary 'The Six Billion Dollar Man,' which premiered at Cannes (with Assange himself present) in the festival's Special Screenings program. Beginning with the founding of initially modest startup WikiLeaks in the mid-2000s and the swift impact of its uncompromising journalism in media and political spheres alike, the film progresses in mostly linear fashion through attempts by various national administrations to stymie and silence Assange, and concludes with his 2024 return to Australia after five years in a high-security British prison, following a successful plea deal with U.S. prosecutors. There hasn't been another running news narrative quite like Assange's, in which secondary players range from Donald Trump to Pamela Anderson to a sociopathic teen hacker from Iceland: There's potential here for grandstanding, but Jarecki tells this tall true story with the same probing, drily enraged authority he brought to his 2005 military-industrial complex doc 'Why We Fight' or 2012's drug-war study 'The House I Live In.' 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Formally, it's meat-and-potatoes nonfiction filmmaking, alternating archival footage — including, most interestingly, claustrophobic video from Assange's seven-year asylum in Ecuador's cramped London embassy — with talking-head contributions from an ensemble of Assange's associates, peers and journalistic descendants. The most offbeat stylistic imposition here is a series of tonally loaded chapter headings that begin with a 'Star Wars' theme ('A New Hope,' 'The Empire Strikes Back') before the conceit is oddly dropped two entries in. ('Return of the Jedi' would be a tough one to shoehorn into the subject at hand, admittedly; 'The Phantom Menace' less so.) Among the interviewees is cultural commentator Naomi Klein, who explains how WikiLeaks grew out of an early, more idealistic incarnation of the internet, prior to the rise of social media, in which its primary purpose was to make information available to all, for free. Many of the site's early journalistic coups — notably the damning 'Collateral Murder' video showing civilians and Reuters journalists being killed in U.S. airstrikes on Bagdad in 2007 — made waves by exposing unjust or corrupt acts by those in power. Yet the fallout from such scoops often shifted to shooting the messenger instead, as the U.S. government in particular sought to paint Assange as a criminal for refusing to overlook their errors in judgment. 'When we've been lied to, would we rather not know?' asks famed NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, in championing Assange's work. Snowden frames the question rhetorically, though as the film reaches the Trump era of fake news and bad-faith far-right propaganda, Jarecki grimly concludes that many people prefer a lie they can agree with to the truth. It's that cultural turn in the weather that hastened and worsened Assange's downfall, triggered by a pair of rape charges in Sweden — into which the alleged victims admit they felt railroaded by police. It was Assange's very real concerns about being extradited to the U.S., however, that saw him improbably seek refuge in the aforementioned Ecuadorian embassy. Ecuador's offer of asylum to Assange, too, is subject to changing cultural tides: The film's title refers to the amount offered in 2019 by the Trump administration to a new, more allyship-inclined Ecuadorian government to give him up. Cue five years' incarceration instead, much of it solitary, in the U.K.'s notoriously punishing Belmarsh prison — where, insists UN human rights expert Nils Melzer, he was subjected to sustained psychological torture, and emerged as a frailer, more anxiety-ridden man for the experience. (Perhaps this is partly the reason for Assange's own limited first-hand presence in Jarecki's film.) Fighting his corner all the while is dogged Australian human rights lawyer Jen Robinson and Stella Moris, another loyal member of his legal team, who eventually became Assange's wife, and mother to two of his children. Their personally colored interviews lend a more intimate dimension to a film that often, not inaccurately, presents Assange as a larger-than-life cause célèbre — an emblem of straightforward truth-telling principles at a time when AI, political spin and stubborn bigotry are allowing many media consumers to choose their own reality. 'We have given up on the idea that facts matter,' sighs Klein, while Assange closes 'The Six Billion Dollar Man' with an admission of the compromise that finally got the U.S. government off his case: 'I'm not here because the system worked, I'm here because I pled guilty to journalism.' 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