The Trust Fall: Julian Assange – REVIEW
Image: THE TRUST FALL: JULIAN ASSANGE
The Trust Fall: Julian Assange is a powerful examination of how WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange went from being feted by many for giving a new definition to press freedoms to how he ended up a high security prisoner in HM Prison Belmarsh.
In just over two hours, writer director Kym Staton takes us from Assange’s early life in Australia to Melbourne University and onto the world stage where he realised WikiLeaks as a new platform for publishing in the digital age.
One of the film’s most shocking moments is the inclusion of the “collateral murder” footage of the helicopter attack in Iraq that killed a group of journalists and those that came to their aid.
It is from WikiLeaks’s release of this footage via various news outlets that Assange’s current predicament arose.
Using the onscreen support of eminent identities such as the late John Pilger, original whistle blower Daniel Ellsberg, Stella Assange, Gabriel and John Shipton, Tariq Ali and narrators Roger Waters, M.I.A, Tom Morello, Susan Sarandon and Jonathan Oldham, Staton puts the argument that Assange is indeed a journalist and that the call for him to be extradited from the UK to the USA should be seen as an attack on press freedom.
The Trust Fall: Julian Assange is currently being screened in cinemas around Australia at a time when Assange is due to hear if he will win a case for an appeal in the UK courts.
“Our strategy for the moment is just cinema after a short run of festivals,” Kym Staton, writer director said.
“All three major chains have shown it plus around 200 independent cinemas, and we have had nearly 1,000 sessions so far.
The film has been screening for around three months and there is no end date before it goes to pay for view and then streaming before a potential free-to-air television release.
The two-year shoot time and a year in editing meant that all up, The Trust Fall: Julian Assange was three years in the making made possible by a highly successful crowd funding campaign.
“Early in the project we got the GoFundMe page and support was slow at the beginning,” Staton said.
“Co-producer Natalia Minana made memes of Julian’s quotes that revealed his vision, such as ‘If wars can be started by lies, then peace can be stated by truth’ and ‘I believe the way to justice is through education’ and then it took off.”
Assange also referred to WikiLeaks as ‘The largest bullshit detection machine in the world’.
Crowdfunding supporters, who are given credits on the film, were also important later on after the film’s initial release.
“We don’t have massive investment behind us, so the film has to go at its own pace, but some investors have helped us pay to advertise sessions and that brings a lot more people out than if we just put it out organically,” Staton said.
For the UK release, Staton and Minana’s company Film For Change is partnering with Journeyman Pictures in London who are putting a dedicated team behind the release.
“It’s a team effort as they specialise in streaming and TV and I have experience in putting documentaries into cinema,” Staton said.
“We want to take it all over the world, we have just started in New Zealand and the UK, with the US and Europe still to come.”
