“The Fifth Estate” Julian Assange bio opens Toronto Film Festival

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Fifth Estate director Bill Condon on Thursday, September 5 night said he had "wanted to make a political film for some time" and has done so with his movie biopic about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"What was rich about this story is it deals with an area of privacy and transparency in an Internet age and about what secrets are too important not to tell," the filmmaker said as his true-life drama opened the Toronto Film Festival.

And with Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning making headlines, Condon added that the issue of whistleblowers as hero or pariah was ripe for viewing and debate by moviegoing audiences.

"This is a story that continues to be central and also sees people of great intelligence and good will disagree. Hopefully, this film presents the issue in all its complexity, and I hope to start a conversation," Condon said.

Earlier, Condon and the cast of The Fifth Estate -- including Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Assange, Dan Steven and Daniel Bruhl -- walked the red carpet into Roy Thomson Hall for the gala premiere.

The film's screenwriter, Josh Singer (The West Wing) during a pre-gala party hosted by Bell Media at Roy Thomson Hall, recounted two years ago being courted by DreamWorks to take on the screen adaptation of the Assange story.

The film is based on two books about Assange: Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s 2011 book, Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website, and WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding.

"Deciding to take a shot, I spent the weekend with some college buddies, trying to get my head around how to cover the (WikiLeaks) issues and make it entertaining," Singer recounted.

"I hope we've done that," he added.