Tag: Julian Assange

  • The Fifth Estate announced as the Closing Film of the 15th Mumbai Film Festival

    The Fifth Estate announced as the Closing Film of the 15th Mumbai Film Festival

    MUMBAI : As the city’s most eagerly awaited cultural event, the 15th Mumbai Film Festival, organized by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image draws closer, it has been revealed that this edition of the festival will conclude with the screening of ‘The Fifth Estate”as its Closing Film, a dramatic thriller directed by Bill Condon.

     The Fifth Estate is a dramatic thriller based on real events that reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st century’s most fiercely debated organization. The film is co-produced by DreamWorks and Participant Media and opened the  Toronto International Film Festival 2013.

    The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world’s most legendary media organizations combined. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society-and what are the costs of exposing them.

    The festival promises to feature a lineup of over 200 movies from 65 countries and  has announced new initiatives as part of the Mumbai Film Mart (Filmy Room and India Project Room) and a brand new Experimental film section to the festival.

    The 15th edition of the Mumbai Film Festival will be held from the 17th – 24th October, 2013 at Liberty  Cinemas and Metro Cinema as the main festival venues and Cinemax, Andheri as the satellite venue. 

  • Julian Assange hits out The Fifth Estate accusing it of fanning the flames

    Julian Assange hits out The Fifth Estate accusing it of fanning the flames

    MUMBAI: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has hit out on The Fifth Estate, said to be based on WikiLeaks, his secret-spilling website and has termed it to be a “massive propaganda attack”.

    Speaking to students at Britain‘s prestigious Oxford University by videolink from the Ecuadoran embassy in London, Assange said that he had acquired a copy of the script for The Fifth Estate, that is due to release in November next.

    “It is a lie upon lie. The movie is a massive propaganda attack on WikiLeaks and the character of my staff,” Assange is reported to have said.

    Assange also accused the film for “fanning the flames” of war against Iran by implying that the Islamic republic was working on a nuclear bomb. Reading from the script, he said the opening scene was set inside a military complex in Iran with documents containing nuclear symbols.

    “How does this have anything to do with us?” Assange questioned.

    DreamWorks Studios had on Tuesday announced that it had begun shooting the WikiLeaks film that stars British actor Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange.