“It Was Too Dangerous To Make This Film in America”: Eugene Jarecki on The Six Billion Dollar Man

Eugene Jarecki’s The Six Billion Dollar Man, much like its main character Julian Assange, is a doc destined to spark controversy. Jam-packed with gripping never before seen footage (much of it captured by Ecuadorian embassy CCTV) and an eclectic roster of interviewees (from Edward Snowden to Pamela Anderson), the film offers a sort of vertigo-inducing alternative history of the WikiLeaks founder and his tabloid-sensationalized troubles; and in doing so asks us to reconsider the media narrative that’s long been built by unseen hands around him. For how much of what we know about the information freedom fighter is actually “true,” and how much a manipulation by covert forces willing to go to any, even illegal, lengths to protect unsavory secrets? In other words, The Six Billion Dollar Man uses the story of an eccentric public enemy number one to expose an even more consequential and seemingly unaccountable protagonist — our own US government. A few days before the December 5th theatrical release of the Cannes-premiering film (which won both the L’Œil d’or Jury Prize and the Golden Globe Prize for Documentary), Filmmaker caught up with the acclaimed veteran director (Why We Fight, The House I Live In, The Trials of Henry Kissinger) to learn all about attempting to craft “the definitive telling of this saga.”

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.