Friday, March 29, 2024

Oscar Winner’s “Long Lost” Julian Assange Movie, Previewed in Cannes, Aiming at Spring Release

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I was starting to wonder what happened to Laura Poitras’s movie about Julian Assange. Considering all the crappy stuff Assange dredged up this fall during our election,  I thought “Risk”– which was previewed in Cannes– would come out and cause a ruckus.

As it happens, I am told that Poitras, the Oscar winning filmmaker of “Citizenfour,” is still working on “Risk” and hoping to have it out in spring 2017. It won’t make Sundance, but could be ready for South by Southwest or the Tribeca Film Festival.

The hold up? Poitras is busy adding all the mishegos from the fall, adding and shaping, so that the amazing elements from “Risk” make sense. In the Cannes version, we saw how Assange slipped out of custody and came to live in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. We also saw Lady Gaga’s extraordinary interview with the scoundrel of leaking. Plus we learned that Wikileaks warned Apple about iTunes being used as a backdoor for infiltration by spies.

Now, of course, Poitras has much to add– like Pamela Anderson visiting Assange at the embassy, the Ecuadorians turning off Assange’s WiFi during the US election, and so on. Plus there were all the document dumps, and Assange’s war on Hillary Clinton. When Poitras is done, “Risk” will be even hotter stuff than it already was.

So we wait til spring. And Assange continues to marinate in his own juices, learning Ecuadorian recipes.

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.
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