The Fifth Estate

You don't disclose three-quarters of a million classified documents without making a few enemies. So discovers WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate, a mesmerizing, complex portrait of an embattled new-media luminary. The Fifth Estate details WikiLeaks's rise to international notoriety and the subsequent souring of relations between Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch, also appearing at the Festival in 12 Years a Slave and August: Osage County) and his most trusted lieutenant, Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl, also at the Festival in Ron Howard's Rush).

Drawing on Domscheit-Berg's memoir, Inside WikiLeaks, as well as a 2011 exposé by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, screenwriter Josh Singer chronicles the friendship that underpinned the whistleblower organization's formative feats of information activism (targeting entities including Swiss private bank Julius Baer, the Church of Scientology, and the British National Party), and would end in acrimonious estrangement following WikiLeaks's un-redacted publication of nearly 750,000 United States military logs and diplomatic cables — the largest leak of official secrets in American history.

As well as an engrossing investigative thriller, The Fifth Estate is a drama of Shakespearean dimensions, driven by a masterful performance from Cumberbatch. His Assange is a fiercely intelligent coil of contradictions, tyrannical in his advocacy for transparency, at once both hubristic and deeply insecure. Brühl, in turn, contributes an adroit portrayal of conflicted devotion, leading an exceptional supporting cast that also includes Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci, Anthony Mackie, Alicia Vikander, and David Thewlis.

Rounding out a remarkable package is Condon's fleet, propulsive direction, which ensures The Fifth Estate is not only among the year's timeliest films, but also its most entertaining.