Examining the meaning and significance of the insights that WikiLeaks shared with the world, the resulting behaviour of the governments involved, the extraordinary personal risk taken by Assange, and the wider fundamental issues around press freedom that affect all of us and our right to know.
The campaign to free Julian Assange takes on intimate dimensions in this documentary portrait of an elderly man’s fight to save his son. Arguably the world’s most famous political prisoner, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a figure pretty much everybody has an opinion about; perhaps more importantly, he serves as the emblem of an international arm wrestle over freedom of journalism, government corruption and unpunished war crimes. For his family members who face the prospect of losing him forever to the abyss of the US justice system, however, this David-and-Goliath struggle is personal – and, with his health declining in a British maximum-security prison and American government prosecutors pulling out all the stops to extradite him, the clock is ticking.
Julian Paul Assange (/əˈsɑːnʒ/ ə-SAHNZH;[3] né Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, hacker, and cypherpunk activist. He has a previous conviction for hacking, dating back to 1996. He founded WikiLeaks in 2006; the organisation came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.