The Fifth Estate

The Fifth Estate (2013) is Bill Condon's biographical thriller, available to watch online on iFILM. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Julian Assange, the Australian hacker whose platform for anonymous leaks rewrote how hidden information moves through the world.

The film is told through German activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), the early ally who believed in the cause and was the first to walk away from it. Two coders with laptops take on governments and corporations, publishing documents the biggest newspapers could never reach. The bigger the fame, the worse the friendship cracks: an argument over whether to redact the names in the leaks hardens into an open break. It all builds toward the release of a vast cache of American diplomatic cables.

The cast includes David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney. The screenplay leans on books by Domscheit-Berg and reporters at The Guardian, so it sees the story through a recent supporter rather than Assange himself. At its core it's an argument about the price of transparency. Stream The Fifth Estate (2013) online on iFILM.