Digital Dissidents

Digital Dissidents are the warriors of the digital age: Republican patriots, radical anarchists and cyber-hippies fight side by side for transparency and privacy in the digital world. For that, they are in prison, live in exile or have lost their careers and families. While many people celebrate them as heroes, critics, intelligence services and companies condemn their actions as an assault on our security. Why are they doing it? What are their motives?

Year

2015

Length

52, 90 min

Director

Cyril Tuschi

The film focuses on people, who became dissidents out of different motivations: NSA-whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake or William Binney, the journalist Daniel Ellsberg, who is said to be the prime father of whistleblowers since he published the „Pentagon Papers“ in the 1970s, or the former British MI5-agent Annie Machon. They have worked in the system for years and finally attacked it from within by disclosing sensitive information. Julian Assange, founder of Wiki-Leaks, published secret information in his fight for radical transparency and uncovered US war crimes in Iraq.

Additional Interviews with CDU-politician Stephan Mayer, Big-Data-expert Yvonne Hofstetter, the philosopher and former German Minister of Cultural Affairs Julian Nida-Rümelin or co-founder of the Chaos Computer Club Bernd Fix, open up the topic for a broad audience from different perspectives.

“Digital Dissidents” is part of the media event “Supernerds” (TV-event, theatre play “Die Avantgarde der Supernerds” by Angela Richter, book, web) that will be broadcasted on May 28th on WDR.

Credits

Director
Cyril Tuschi

Written by
Georg Tschurtschenthaler
Cyril Tuschi

Producer
Georg Tschurtschenthaler
Zora Nessl

Director of Photography
Peter Dörfler

Editing
Annette Muff

Music
Stein Berge Svendsen

Production Manager
Anique Roelfsema
Johannes Knoll

Line Producer
Kathrin Isberner

Commissioning Editor
Christiane Hinz

Executive Producer
Christian Beetz

Sales & distribution

Trailer

„Just in diesem Moment überraschen uns die aus dem Theaterbereich stammenden jungen Regisseure Hans Block und Moritz Riesewieck mit einem erstaunlichen Dokumentarfilm, der seit Monaten Publikum und Kritik auf den wichtigsten Festivals der Welt elektrisiert. Völlig zu Recht: Es ist, als würden einem die Scheuklappen weggerissen, als sähe man das, was sich seit Jahren direkt vor unseren Augen abspielt, zum ersten Mal unverschleiert... eine fesselnde ,Doku noir' mit höchstem Anspruch...Dieser Film müsste an allen Schulen gezeigt werden.“

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

17.05.2018