A divisive figure in a world of political cohesion, Julian Assange’s origin and ascent of the controversial WikiLeaks website is being brought to the screen by acclaimed director Bill Condon. Still, for an individual supposedly desperate to expose the truth, he’s very much a private person whose certainly not keen to have his own life looked at in great detail. As he currently sits in an Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Assange finds his future is very much unknown as he fights extradition on rape charges.
Benedict Cumberbatch is man tasked with portraying the Australian whistleblower alongside Daniel Bruhl as his former friend and colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg in fact-based thriller THE FIFTH ESTATE. Here we have alternative poster artwork for both pivotal players.
The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world’s most legendary media organizations combined. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society-and what are the costs of exposing them?
THE FIFTH ESTATE also features a superb supporting cast of Stanely Tucci, Anthony Mackie, Carice van Houton, Peter Capaldi, Alicia Vikander, David Thewlis, Dan Stevens and Laura Linney. It’s released in the US on the 18th October and the UK a week earlier on the 11th October.
Source: IMPAwards
