Numerous movies about the Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have been made over the years, most prominently by leading US documentarians Alex Gibney (We Steal Secrets) and Laura Poitras (Risk). Benedict Cumberbatch played him in The Fifth Estate, which Assange and his coterie had no part of.

But they believe now is the best time to update his story, as Assange last year won his battle in fighting extradition to the US with the help of his unflappable human rights lawyers, Australian Jennifer Robinson and his wife Stella. Ultimately, he was able to return to Australia with the help of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who advocated for his release.

Framed as a high-tech international thriller with a punchy final act, documentary film The Six Billion Dollar Man world premiered in Cannes last month, receiving strong reviews.

It was directed by US documentarian Eugene Jarecki, whose previous notable films Why We Fight and The House I Live In criticised America’s military and penitentiary systems. Jarecki spent five years following Assange’s story, interviewing Robinson and Stella Assange as well as the likes of Edward Snowden, Pamela Anderson, Naomi Klein and Anthony Albanese.

“We spent a lot of time with Prime Minister Albanese,” Jarecki notes. “He was a very, very helpful figure for Julian Assange, but he was also very open to a camera crew focused on democracy. He struck me as a highly democratic person, and I was very impressed with him.

“I followed Jen Robinson to interview him, not only on one occasion, but several, when he was both a candidate and then ultimately as PM. The most important thing I can tell you about Anthony Albanese – and I don’t work for him; I don’t know anything about Australian politics – is that what he said as a candidate is what he did when he was prime minister. And who can you say that about in the modern era?”

In a separate interview I ask Robinson and Stella Assange, who are seated together, about the film’s final act.

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“I’m thrilled that people see us getting Julian out of prison, and that they get that behind-the-scenes look at that remarkable day when we walked off the plane and Stella and Julian were free to be in Canberra,” Robinson responds. “What a beautiful moment. It one of the most rewarding days of my career.”

Perhaps the biggest revelation in the film is the surveillance Assange was under at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London – and who was orchestrating it.

“The material that you see in this film about the spying in the embassy, the whistleblower who spoke out about the amount of surveillance that we were all under, me as a lawyer, Stella as Julian’s wife, Julian himself – it’s shocking,” Robinson says.

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At one point we see a distressed Assange crouching and covering his head in order to not be recorded, something that might be written off as paranoia—but it was real. Jarecki reveals that Las Vegas casino and resort owner Sheldon Adelson, a big Trump backer until his death in 2021, had been involved in installing surveillance equipment in the embassy to monitor Assange and to record his voice at all times.

This came about after Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa (who attended the Cannes world premiere), who had initially granted Assange’s request for asylum, lost office. His successor, Lenin Moreno, president from 2017 to 2021, became allied with the Trump administration with offers of an aid package (hence the six billion dollars in the film’s title) if Assange was expelled from the embassy. Jarecki refers to it as “a $6 billion bounty put on his head”.

“The first Trump administration really ramped things up,” Stella Assange says. “But, you know, the Obama administration was the one that started this and it took from the moment of publication (of leaks in 2010 by Chelsea Manning) till Julian’s arrest and imprisonment in Belmarsh.

“So it was nine years (including seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy), and then another five years in Belmarsh. This was a period in which the institutions and the norms that should have protected Julian really failed, and now we are where we are, in a world that’s in a terrible place. I see it all as a continuum.”

On June 24, 2024, Assange agreed to plead guilty to one count of violating the US Espionage Act, which enabled him to be a free man.

‘I wanted to tell that full story and capture the full implications of that victory for Julian, which is also a defeat for press freedom’

“Julian was exonerated by the United States, where he faced 18 charges and 175 years in prison,” Jarecki explains. “Then they ended up dropping 17 charges, showing that their case was made of nothing. The last charge they left him with, which he had to plead guilty to, was what? Journalism?

“I wanted to tell that full story and capture the full implications of that victory for Julian, which is also a defeat for press freedom. The United States made a precedent where a journalist was put in jail for five years in the United Kingdom on behalf of America, and that should give anyone pause when we think about our human right to information.”

In terms of the film being seen, Jarecki notes that “we’re prepared for a lot of what may come now, in terms of pressures against the truth-telling in the film. We ran a very secure operation in making the film and keeping the material that we have in our possession protected and secret. We have far more that could be damaging to the credibility of US policy makers than we’ve (allowed) to be in the film.”

Assange was in Cannes for the premiere but kept relatively quiet, merely saying “thank you” at his film’s premiere. He wore a t-shirt listing the names of Palestinian children killed in Gaza, which he also referred to along with the Ukraine conflict in a short speech when the film won a prize in the L’Oeil d’or documentary awards.

Whether his stance on Gaza and Ukraine will feed any upcoming activity is anyone’s guess.

“Julian will live to fight another day,” Jarecki says. “He’s a bit of a sphinx, so it’s always hard to know where he’ll go next … though I’ve heard a few comments from him in recent days that tell me he’s got his eyes on the Right, on what’s running the world right now.”

I ask Stella Assange if their lives have settled in Australia and if they might travel with the film.

“Yes, we’re in Australia,” she says. “I don’t know what might happen. I don’t know.”

Adds Robinson: “Julian can travel anywhere, but not to America. But it’s wonderful to see Julian, Stella and their two kids living their lives in Australia in freedom.”

“The kids are at school,” Stella Assange says. “They’re, you know, country bumpkins now.”

The Six Billion Dollar Man is awaiting release in Australia.

Helen Barlow is a Paris-based Australian freelance journalist and critic. In 2019 she received the La Plume d’Or for her services to French cinema.