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With the scope of possibility in visual effects and the boundlessness of imagination there are very few places we cannot explore in fiction nowadays… that is unless we explore stories that are stranger than fiction. There is a tangible thirst for the real; the overwhelming response to Netflix documentary Making a Murderer in the news and social media, as just one example, exposes the desire for and importance of representation of real events available to be streamed to a large audience. We love a case we can really sink our teeth into and, whether on screen or off, documentary even has the power to deliver justice.

Through documentary, we are offered a look into the actions, beliefs and injustices of others whose lives and experiences are vastly different to our own. We are introduced to events that we can become invested in and leave feeling as though we have a...

Featuring: Brittany Kaiser, David Carroll, Paul-Olivier Dehaye, Julian Wheatland, Carole Cadwalladr, Ravi Naik, Paul Hilder, Christopher Wylie, Emma Graham-Harrison, Gill Phillips, Sarah Donaldson, Roger McNamee | Written by Karim Amer, Erin Barnett, Pedro Kos | Directed by Karim Amer, Jehane Noujaim

It is becoming increasingly clear that Netflix is at its best within its market of original content when it crafts documentaries. The Great Hack, directed by duo Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, reinforces said attribute tenfold with an eerie, informative and enlightening account with a subject matter on the world’s fastest-growing asset – consumer data. An extraordinary venture that begins with one man’s mission to gain his data back from a consumer and soon opens up a world that touches on firestorms ranging from political agendas and fraud, the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the infamous data scandal from Facebook.

The Great Hack is a deep and profound documentary that will...

Plenty of Sundance movies get a few tweaks after the festival. However, Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim’s Cambridge Analytica documentary “The Great Hack” saw a whole new level of adjustment after its 2019 premiere as a work in progress, including the introduction of protagonist Brittany Kaiser — a fascinating, moody woman with a sad poker face whose true values and beliefs even she does not appear to know.

“We didn’t know the degree that things would happen,” said Amer. “Every time you think you know the full story, there was a little more of the Mueller investigation. She’d forget to tell us she met with Julian Assange, or went to Russia.”

Few filmmakers are comfortable with turning their movies inside out, but Amer and Noujaim are used to collaborating with the news cycle. Noujaim first knew Amer as an activist; they met while she was filming “The Square” during the Arab Spring uprisings.

Plenty of Sundance movies get a few tweaks after the festival. However, Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim’s Cambridge Analytica documentary “The Great Hack” saw a whole new level of adjustment after its 2019 premiere as a work in progress, including the introduction of protagonist Brittany Kaiser — a fascinating, moody woman with a sad poker face whose true values and beliefs even she does not appear to know.

“We didn’t know the degree that things would happen,” said Amer. “Every time you think you know the full story, there was a little more of the Mueller investigation. She’d forget to tell us she met with Julian Assange, or went to a Russian intelligence meeting.”

Few filmmakers are comfortable with turning their movies inside out, but Amer and Noujaim are used to collaborating with the news cycle. Noujaim first knew Amer as an activist; they met while she was filming...

NetflixThe Netflix documentary reveals the faces behind the Cambridge Analytica scandal that shook democracies around the world in March last year. Manasa RaoEven as you click to read this review of a Netflix documentary, your digital journey has come some length— from the time you activated the Wifi or data connection to opening your phone or laptop, to clicking on the link and scrolling— hopefully— to the end. The data trail or ‘digital footprint’ is the hottest commodity in the 21st century’s modern capitalist society. This is why The Great Hack chooses to focus on one of the most jarring scandals in recent history that exposed just how much the actions of one social media giant has hurt millions of people around the world and their hard-earned democracies. The Netflix documentary revolves around the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal that shook the world in March last year. Investigations by...

Did you know how important you are to the world’s movers and shakers? That’s the most charitable way to describe the unwitting technical mining of our personal data, and the manipulation of it in order to change our behavior, that’s turned into one of the most pressing issues of modern times.

Since it’s facilitated the rise in authoritarianism across the globe, it can’t be explained enough, or fought back against too strongly. With the new documentary “The Great Hack,” there’s now a sufficiently paranoid primer at hand to keep you questioning just what happens every time you engage with the world digitally, and why you should care about holding big tech accountable for their breaches of trust.

Directors Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim focus primarily on the scandal involving Facebook and now-bankrupt Cambridge Analytica, the sinisterly ambitious data firm funded by Republican moneyman Robert Mercer,...

Do you really know who has your personal data on the internet? When you take a survey or share information on Facebook, where is it going? Many have never paid it a second thought. The new documentary The Great Hack, about to debut on Netflix this Wednesday, makes the case that this is a national failing. The doc propositions that data rights are a form of human rights, one being taken advantage of at every turn. With some visual flourishes, the work attempts to shock audiences into rising up to demand this new right. The documentary is a look at data exploitation, filtered through the lens of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. That controversy after the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States and the Brexit vote is just part of that dark world. Following David Carroll, as he seeks to find out what the company knows about him and what data of his they actually have,...

Like most people, you’d probably never heard the name “Cambridge Analytica,” or were even aware of the company’s existence before March of 2018, when the New York Times and the Guardian began reporting on the firm’s harvesting of private Facebook user information. Unless, of course, you were a member of the Trump campaign’s team — then you were well aware of what these data analysts were doing for Ted Cruz’s bid for the Presidency back in 2015. Thanks to their targeting of certain types of potential voters, the junior U.