From Iceland — MP Happy With The WikiLeaks Movie

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Birgitta Jónsdóttir, MP for the Pirate Party and WikiLeaks affiliate, is pleased with film The Fifth Estate which tells the story of the beginning of WikiLeaks and the rise of Julian Assange.

Birgitta, who participated in one of the organization’s major leaks that was prepared in Iceland, assisted the script writers during the film’s pre-production.

“I was rather angry when I first saw the script and put a lot of effort into having changes made and trying to have Julian’s part corrected,” Birgitta said on the morning show on radio station Rás 2.

She said that initially she was far from pleased with the script as it was in many ways inaccurate and shed a dim and negative light on Julian Assange.

Birgitta watched the film at a special screening in Iceland on Thursday and admitted to having been rather nervous, having heard rumours that the film as in fact a propaganda against WikiLeaks and Assange.

But she was pleasantly surprised. “None of the scenes are 100% accurate, which is understandable as it’s cramping events that took place in the course of two years into two hours. But I feel it captures the spirit and the atmosphere of what it was like when we received one of the biggest information leaks in history.”

However, she’s not happy with how Daniel Berg, Assange’s former associate, is made the hero of the film, at the expense of Julian Assange.

But Birgitta complimented Benedict Cumberbatch’s interpretation of Julian Assange.

“I spent a lot of time with Julian, we worked a lot at my house and my younger son got to know him quite well. When we were watching the last scene of the film, he sometimes wasn’t quite sure whether it had been Julian or Benedict he had met. That says a lot about that actor’s performance.”

Even though Birgitta thinks it’s too soon to make a film about WikiLeaks story, she feels that the makers of The Fifth Estate did overall a good job and recommends that people see the film.

“I saw it with a group of good people, some of whom participated in these events and they were overall rather pleased. It’s a unique film in the way that it shows how Iceland managed to influence world history.”