(WikiRebels — The Documentary. Producer: SVT; directed by investigative reporters Bosse Lindquist and Jesper Huor; featuring interviews withJulian Assange, Kristinn Hrafnsson, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Iain Overton)
Final cut locked: Dec. 9. Release date: Dec. 12. Location: Sweden.
"WikiRebels" is that spontaneous documentary that has little time to gestate and churn. It's both a short and sweeping history of WikiLeaks, the organization, and a tight and telling portrait of a determined and daring man, Julian Assange.
Since airing on Sweden's public service broadcasting station, SVT, "WikiRebels" has been or is slated to be released in over fourteen countries around the world including Israel, Canada, Australia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Norway, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. It can also be seen on the internet at SVT.se.
Bosse Lindquist, one of the investigative reporters behind WikiRebels, is a veteran documentarian with over five film titles and roughly 20 radio documentary titles to his credit. I reached him by phone in his native Stockholm, the epicenter of the WikiLeaks crisis, to hear his take on the organization and the mastermind he followed for months.
When did you first begin filming Julian Assange?
That was in September 2010. I first met him in June 2010. WikiLeaks was starting to think about broadcasting partners because they had newspapers. So they came to SVT in Stockholm. Julian was also thinking of applying for residency in Sweden. Sweden gives a lot of protection for freedom of speech.
Had you known of Assange for a while?
Prior to June I had never heard of him or WikiLeaks. But it quickly became clear to me that it was a remarkable project. So I suggested we make a documentary around the Iraq war logs release.
But then came Cablegate and the rape allegations.
Yes, the rape allegations came about while we were filming. They occured after he arrived in Sweden. He made a triumphant arrival in Sweden. The Social Democratic Party had seminars with him and he was lauded all over the place. The rape allegations came as a shock. It was strange — if he had done it, why would he have risked so much?
When his police report got leaked, what were you thinking? Much difference between that leak and the leaking of documents from the State Department?
This is the central question of WikiLeaks. There are reasons why documents in Sweden — or anywhere — get that confidential stamp. So leaking has often a price. My feeling is that in certain circumstances, like the Collateral Murder video, it's so clear that crimes were commited that WikiLeaks did a huge service to the world. People might get justice. Perhaps the act of war making will change in the future. But for some parts of the information that was published from the cables more had the character of gossip, and hence much harder to justify. It's the same with the transcripts from the Swedish police — releasing their contents would probably not help the rest of the world shed much light on WikiLeaks.
