Watch First Clip From ‘The Six Billion Dollar Man,’ Eugene Jarecki’s Explosive Oscar-Contending Doc On Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange

EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki harbors no doubt about who came out the victor in the protracted legal battle between the U.S. government and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He says Assange prevailed over the most powerful country in the world.

In Jarecki’s Oscar-contending documentary The Six Billion Dollar Manthe director explores the stunning classified information Wikileaks exposed over the years, like the “collateral murder” video that showed U.S. military personnel in Apache helicopters firing on innocent people in Iraq in 2007, killing a dozen people including two Reuters journalists. And he documents the twists and turns in the American government’s legal case against Assange that charged him with violations of the Espionage Act and conspiracy related to computer hacking.

Earlier this month, Watermelon Pictures announced it acquired North American rights to the documentary. It plans an Oscar-qualifying run this year before a wider theatrical release in the new year. Watch an extended clip from the film above.

Assange has been free for a little over a year since he struck a plea bargain with the U.S. that saw him plead guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act, though he publicly stipulated the espionage law runs counter to the First Amendment, bringing into question its legality. He attended the world premiere of The Six Billion Dollar Man at the Cannes Film Festival in May where it won the festival’s 10^th anniversary L’Oeil d’or prize, along with the newly-created Golden Globe Award for documentary.

Assange attended the L’Oeil d’or ceremony; Deadline attempted to speak with him there but he declined. We did talk with Jarecki after he accepted the L’Oeil d’or prize.

“It’s exciting, it’s validation for Julian and for Wikileaks,” Jarecki told us. “I think Julian is getting validated all over the world. I think it started when the U.S. dropped 17 of their 18 counts against him and revealed that they had literally been in a campaign to destroy him all these years. That’s where he first got a boost. All that’s happening now is he gets to take his victory lap. He gets to take his triumphant walk on the ashes of their phony case against him.”

In Cannes, we also spoke with the filmmaker in our Deadline Studio where he alluded to the meaning of his documentary’s title.

“What we witnessed is about 15 years of [the U.S.] going after Julian Assange to bury him and his team,” Jarecki noted, “and ultimately the U.S. government was willing to spend $6 billion to try to destroy him, which is what the film really reveals.”

Much of that $6B figure took the form of an alleged financial inducement offered by the first Trump administration in 2019 that incentivized Ecuador to renege on a deal that had granted political asylum to Assange. After his asylum was revoked, Assange was booted from the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he had taken refuge; he was promptly arrested by U.K. authorities and spent five years in custody there before striking his plea deal with the U.S. under the Biden administration.

The Six Billion Dollar Man is produced by Jarecki and Kathleen Fournier for Charlotte Street Films, and co-produced by Andrew McLain, Molly Bareiss, Claudia Becker, José Passarelli, and Juan Passarelli; executive producers include Addison O’Dea, Mathilde Bonnefoy, Geralyn White Dreyfous, and James Packer.

Jarecki’s credits include Why We Fight (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance 2005), The House I Live In (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance 2012), and The King (Cannes Official Selection, 2017).

Regarding The Six Billion Dollar Manhe told us in our studio interview, “The truth matters to us more than ever because we’re living in a world that really feels like it’s spinning out of control to most of us. So we want to know what’s going on. And when you find out that the U.S. government was willing to spend $6 billion just to bury one truth seeker, it tells you what they think about the truth, the very truth we want to know. So, there’s more reason than ever to understand the Assange and Wikileaks story because it relates to everything we are all about to face in our own world.”

Watch the extended clip from The Six Billion Dollar Man above.