2013 Directed by Johannes Wahlström
A small group of Wikileaks journalists make their way through Central Asia interviewing newspaper editors. Their real goal: to find local media outlets to publish secret US diplomatic cables. This intelligent, guerrilla-style doc follows their fascinating journey from Afghanistan to Manhattan, through the boundaries of free speech and the minds of those who shape our understanding of the world.
Медиастан, 미디어스탠
UK
UK
About halfway through the film an interviewee in Turkmenistan turns the tables on his shadowy interviewers: "Who sent you here?" he asks. "I know you have visas but who sent you here?" The WikiLeaks reps avoid the question. CIAssange has always been more motivated by "openness" and "democracy" in non-aligned parts of the world than where leftist media coverage claims his concern primarily lies, i.e. with the US government. This little doc demonstrates that imabalance well. Recall that Assange and his outfit were first promoted stateside by Time magazine and Cass Sunstein, Harvard "human rights" lawyer and husband of Samantha Power.
Assange walked so that the Intercept and the Grayzone could run.
"Are we the baddies?"
A barebones documentary with some compelling subject matter. As other reviewers mention, it could have gone a bit deeper and added to it's runtime while still keeping this a reasonable length.
I wish we could have had more conversations with each newspaper editor, but due to the fact that the doc crew is travelling from place-to-place it probably wasn't possible within their constraints.
I wish this documentary was longer, but I really appreciated this film as a whole. It wasn't biased, or trying to make the viewer be forced into believing certain ideas or certain people. It documented interviews and wikileaks' problems to get Journalists to publish these cables as they were, and really showed how fucked up Journalism and censorship is. No one wanted to publish these cables because they had to go through the states since the USA controls radio speak practically everywhere. It was really interesting to see and I would recommend it if you're interested in what Journalists go through to publish certain things, and the hardships they go through to get it out there.
