Alerts & Newsletters

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Laura Poitras’ Julian Assange Documentary ‘Risk’ Lands Prime Early Summer Release Date — Exclusive

The film will screen as a Special Closing Night screening at FSLC's Art of The Real before its national release.
Laura Poitras' Julian Assange Documentary 'Risk' Gets Release Date
Julian Assange in "Risk"
Praxis Films

Laura Poitras‘ long-awaited Julian Assange documentary, “Risk,” has snagged a prime May theatrical release date, care of newbie distributor NEON. The film will be released in theaters on Friday, May 5, following a May 2 screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Art of The Real showcase, where it will play as a Special Closing Night screening.

“Risk” will open nationally in theaters across the country, including the IFC Center in New York, Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn, Arclight Hollywood, the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica, Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, Alamo Drafthouse New Mission in San Francisco, and the Landmark Atlantic Plumbing Cinema and Landmark West End in DC.

Showtime Networks has partnered with NEON to release the film theatrically, with a television premiere on Showtime this summer also planned.

READ MORE: Cannes Review: Laura Poitras’ Julian Assange Doc ‘Risk’ is a Prequel to ‘Citizenfour’

Poitras has been filming the project for over six years as a follow-up to her Academy Award-winning doc “Citizenfour,” which focused on the plight of whistleblower Edward Snowden. According to Showtime, “Risk” continued to lens through the 2016 presidential election, during which Assange and his WikiLeaks wound up playing a major role.

“Risk” first previewed footage at the New York Film Festival in the autumn 2015, later screening an early version of the film at Cannes in May of last year. That film was sympathetic to the embattled WikiLeaks creator and, at the time, IndieWire chief film critic Eric Kohn wrote that the film was “a series of snapshots that make the case for WikiLeaks as a serious newsgathering enterprise, the movie won’t win Assange new supporters, but certainly offers clarity to his organization by showing that they aren’t just messing round. Sympathizing with her subject and his radical activism, ‘Risk’ doesn’t deliver the engrossing thrills of ‘Citizenfour,’ but it nevertheless radiates with the same degree of urgency.”

READ MORE: Laura Poitras’ Julian Assange Documentary ‘Risk’ Changes Tone As It Lands at Showtime

The final version of the film will reportedly be far less kind to Assange, and a first trailer cast the material in a very new light.

Filmmaker Laura Poitras will be participating in Q&As in various cities across the country in support of the doc’s release. Additionally, as part of NEON’s continued commitment to short films, Josh Begley’s “Best of Luck With the Wall,” a voyage across the U.S.-Mexico border, will screen alongside “Risk.”

You can purchase tickets to “Risk” at Art of The Real right here, and you can find out more about theatrical showings right here.

Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

Daily Headlines
Daily Headlines covering Film, TV and more.

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Must Read
PMC Logo
IndieWire is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 IndieWire Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.