Wikirebels is about a group of hackers, lead by Julian Assange, who started a website called Wikileaks. Wikileaks is a site devoted to finding censored information and sharing it with the general public. They believe in total freedom of the press and the unrestricted flow of information.
The documentary begins by giving some background on Assange. He grew up in Australia and became interested in hacking at a young age. He was found guilty of minor hacking crimes around the age of 13, but he only had to pay minor fees. He came to the U.S. and started Wikileaks. The first 20 minutes of the documentary are about the site and their mission. However, in 2010, Wikileaks made a serious name for itself when it released thousands of classified documents and video clips from the U.S. militrary during the Iraq War. Included in these is a clip from a U.S. militray helicopter in which the captain fires on innocent civilians, and then fires on people that try to help them. The classified material was released by Bradley Manning, a young officer in the war, who was disturbed by what he read and saw and believed the public needed to know. He now faces charges of up to 52 years in prison. Wikileaks is continuing to work on releasing classified information, despite some complications with rape charges brought against Assange in Sweden. In the end, the documentary shows what Wikileaks is working on now, which is also classified, but this time, they are going to edit it to protect national security secrets.
The film does a lot of interviews, which advance the plot. It follows key members of Wikileaks around, getting background on them and their role in the site. In a way, the documentary is similar to a profile documentary, but it focuses on mutiple people. I like how the organize it, by giving background, then showing wikileaks' big discovery, and then showing what they are doing now.
The dramatic aspects of the film were not too noticeable, although they did a good job when they cut back and forth between the helicopter footage and the interviews with the wikileaks personell.
The film portrays the dirty basements and beat up apartments that wikileaks is based out of very well, by shooting the interviews in cluttered, messy areas. The film also uses rack focus shots very well throughout.
Although the first 20 minutes of the film are kind of slow, and some of the footage is low quality, I would still recommend this film for two main reasons. The first is that it is an interesting portayal of an organization with a very interesting philosophy. The second reason is that many people, even after wikileaks released the footage and information, still haven't seen or read it, and this film provides a nice summary.
Here is a clip from the first couple minutes of the film:
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