Eugene Jarecki‘s latest documentary feature, The Six Billion Dollar Man, about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, will screen at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
The film was announced this afternoon as a late addition. The film joins Cannes’ Special Screening sidebar. Also announced this afternoon were Martin Bourboulon’s 13 jours, 13 nuits, which will play Out Of Competition, Ma Fere by Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret, which plays in Cannes Premiere, and Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan lands in Competition with Resurrection.
The Six Billion Dollar Man had been set to screen at Sundance, but was pulled weeks before the festival. Speaking at the time, Jarecki said: “The truth is, significant recent and unexpected developments have emerged at the heart of the story which, if not incorporated in the version for Sundance, would not represent a finished film,” the director says. “Sundance has shaped my career and been a cornerstone of my journey—only something of this magnitude could make me withdraw.”
After years and years fighting the U.S. government and others over the 2010 leaking and distribution of highly classified material related to activity by the American military in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Australian-born Assange and his lawyers struck a deal in June that got him out of prison in the UK. Under the agreement, Assange pleaded guilty to one count of illegally disseminating national security material in a settlement with the Justice Department. In exchange. Assange got his freedom after five years of incarceration in Britain, saw the threat of 175 years behind bars and extradition to the USA lifted, and traveled back home Down Under.
