Film

NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT JACOB APPELBAUM

Rolling Stone called American Jacob Appelbaum “the most dangerous man in cyberspace.” In his youthful heyday Appelbaum was an ascending powerhouse in the internet freedom/security movement, heir-apparent to Julian Assange at Wikileaks, frontman for the TOR project (aka the Dark Web). His cutting edge technological and political work sets him on a tightrope between the world’s insurgents and intelligence communities each of whom want access to the revolution of which he is fast becoming the poster boy. As Edward Snowden’s leaks drop, revealing America’s digital surveillance of its own citizens, life in the US gets too hot for Appelbaum and he decamps to Berlin. Collaborations there with the likes of Ai Wei Wei and Laura Poitras only serve to drive his stock ever-higher, penning multiple exposés for Der Speigel, accepting whistleblower awards on behalf of Snowden, addressing European Parliament on internet security... When suddenly everything goes dark. Appelbaum is dumped by the TOR project. Assange, ensnared in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, can do little to help him. Friends back away. The internet, once the milky way of Appelbaum’s stardom transforms into a toxic pit. Filmmaker Jamie Kastner sets out to determine what happened and why now Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum. Interviews so exclusive as to have been pried from their secretive subjects blend with a trove of little-seen stock footage and original investigation in this spy-story cum cautionary tale- of-our-times, improbably framed by filmmaker Kastner’s bumbling, self-deprecating dark humour.