Award-winning filmmaker Eugene Jarecki on Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and the global crackdown on truth

In 2010, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released a secret video of a U.S. helicopter attack on Iraqi civilians. U.S. authorities charged him with disclosing state secrets and demanded his extradition to the U.S. Assange took refuge inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London and spent a dozen years first inside the embassy and later jailed in the U.K.’s high security Belmarsh Prison. He was released last year after pleading guilty to a single charge under the Espionage Act and now lives in Australia.Last week, Julian Assange returned to the international stage, walking the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival alongside Vermont filmmaker Eugene Jarecki. Jarecki’s new film, “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” chronicles Assange’s crusade to reveal inconvenient truths that governments seek to bury. Jarecki’s new film has been garnering awards, receiving the first-ever Golden Globe Award for best documentary, and taking the special jury prize of the L’Oeil d’or, or Golden Eye award, the documentary film prize at Cannes.At the Golden Globes, the award Jarecki received recognized his work for “combining the skills of a journalist with the voice of a poet.” The statement added, “At a time when truth is under pressure, Eugene’s work reminds us of the power of storytelling to provoke, enlighten, and ultimately defend democracy itself.”Eugene Jarecki has won Emmy and Peabody awards for his previous films, including documentaries about Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and the military-industrial complex.Jarecki lives in Vermont and co-founded the Big Picture Theater in Waitsfield. I caught up with him in Europe.