Sydney ’16: Zero Days review: Super scary spy stuff from one of the best documentary makers working today.
An intriguing and eye-opening film about the dangerous reality of Cyber tech virus Stuxnet. Zero Days review by Paul Heath, February 2016.
Alex Gibney returns for his latest expose in a long line of revealing documentaries, and after exposing the Church Of Scientology in Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (2015), Edward Snowden and the Wikileaks controversy in We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (2013) and Lance Armstrong in The Armstrong Lie (2013), the prolific documentary-filmmakers turns his attention to Stuxnet, a self-replicating computer virus in Zero Days.
Gibney’s intriguing and eye-opening film provides evidence that this highly-threatening, and potentially lethal computer virus, first detected back in 2010, may have been commissioned by the US and Israeli governments, potentially, and I will used the word allegedly here, to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. The virus, which was eventually found by the anti-virus companies, here represented by Kapinsky in Russia, ended up not only infecting its intended target but also spreading uncontrollably. Named Stuxnet by the anti-virus industry, though code-named ‘Olympic Games’ by ‘official sources’, the malware had the power to completely paralyse the infrastructure of entire states in a split second without leaving any trace of those responsible.
When I saw Zero Days in a packed press, industry and jury screening on a particularly cold morning at Berlinale, Alex Gibney dropped a huge bomb on the Berlinale Palast. His new film is truly frightening, and is sure to cause much controversy and debate both here, and when its gets a wider audience. Present in the film himself as narrator, and using multiple talking heads of government officials, journalists, anti-virus experts and hacking whizz-kids, Gibney tackles a hidden threat in today’s modern world; an unknown and potentially lethal enemy with governments seemingly having no control on its power. Gibney’s revelations shock from the beginning, and the film is a largely uncomfortable watch from beginning to end. His latest accomplishment may have as much an impact as the Wikileaks revelations, and the controversy of his last documentary exposing the Church of Scientology.
Zero Days will infuriate you, disgust you, but most of all hopefully wake you up to an extremely worrying new superpower the laptop, or other web browsing device on which you may be reading this article. Super scary stuff.
Zero Days is currently playing at the Sydney Film Festival and will soon play at the Edinburgh Film Festival on 22 June 2016.
