Nobody Wants To Talk About Jacob Appelbaum

Rolling Stone called Jacob Appelbaum “the most dangerous man in cyberspace.” After a traumatic childhood grappling with his mother’s mental health issues and his father’s addiction, Appelbaum emerged at computer hacker conventions, and became the charismatic frontman for the Tor project (aka the Dark Web) and heir apparent to Julian Assange at Wikileaks. He vetted whistleblower Edward Snowden as a source for Laura Poitras’s famous documentary Citizenfour. But as Snowden’s leaks are released, revealing the US’s digital surveillance tactics, Appelbaum flees to East Berlin, penning exposés for Der Speigel, accepting whistleblower awards on behalf of Snowden, addressing the European Parliament on internet security. Then suddenly everything goes dark in 2016. Appelbaum is accused of sexual assault and harassment and dumped by the Tor project. Friends back away. The internet, once the Milky Way of Appelbaum’s stardom, transforms into a toxic pit. 

In this fascinating and eerie examination of how digital technology impacts policing, filmmaker Jamie Kastner follows Appelbaum as he attempts to secure German and Israeli citizenship, setting out to determine what happened and why. — Thaïs Miller

International Premiere

Jamie Kastner has an acclaimed body of work in a wide range of styles from comic-ironic, to cultural, true crime to political thrillers. Kastner’s work has bridged the non-fiction and art-house film worlds, often premiering/playing at top film festivals and doc festivals. It has been commissioned and acquired by top international broadcast outlets and received widespread media coverage including features and reviews in the New York Times, the Guardian and the Times of London.