‘There were plans to poison Julian’: Ithaca, film maps Assange’s struggle for freedom | Movie
Tthe poem Ithaka, written in 1911 by the Greek author Konstantin Cavafys, opens with the lines: “When you leave for Ithaca / you hope that your journey will be long / full of adventure, full of discovery.” It has given a new documentary about Julian Assange both its title and in many ways its theme. The film follows Assange’s 76-year-old father, John Shipton, on his own long and winding journey to try to save his son from US jail on charges of espionage, as a result of state secrets revealed by WikiLeaks, the organization Assange founded.
The film – made by Australian director Ben Lawrence and produced by Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother – will be released in the UK at a crucial time in the journey. Two weeks ago, Interior Minister Priti Patel gave the green light for the extradition of Assange, who has been detained for the past three years in Belmarsh, the high-security prison in London, after spending seven years imprisoned in the Ecuadorian embassy until 1 p.m. his arrest in 2019. His legal team is anchoring the latest decision and the fight will be fought over the coming months.
There have been countless documentaries, books, podcasts and statements about Assange, but Ithaka has a different and very sideways approach and focuses on a father’s search for his son’s freedom. “Julian and I are pretty much the same age, and for one of my generation, he really made a mark,” says director Lawrence in a video call from Sydney. “As an avid reader of the news, I was fascinated by the story. So when the chance came to get involved, I was immediately interested.”
Shipton was not a part of his son’s life from the time Assange was an early three-year-old, nicknamed “Wizard”, until his early 20s. But he has now become a key figure along with Assange’s wife, Stella Moris, in the fight to get him released. We see Shipton outside Old Bailey in 2020 as the referee makes the first decision since it was overturned to stop the extradition on the grounds that it could lead to Assange’s suicide. Footage shows him giving countless interviews and speaking at rallies “because Julian can no longer speak for himself”.
Shipton, who spent his life in the construction industry, was – like his son – always on the maverick side. We hear how, when he was 11, at a boarding school in Bathurst, New South Wales, he wrote lines from Voltaire on the blackboard while his classmates were in the chapel. He was an anti-war activist in his youth when Australia fought alongside the United States in Vietnam, so there is a symmetry: WikiLeaks’ most notorious revelations relate to atrocities committed in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the treatment of discharged prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. “I never found a war I liked,” Shipton says remarkably cheerfully via video from Sheffield, where the film premieres at the documentary festival.
The film captures Shipton on his many travels. “I have two passports filled with stamps – that’s my spreadsheet,” he says. “Geneva eight times, Berlin, Oslo, Bergen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stockholm, Gothenburg. It’s been exhausting, so when Gabriel and I traveled across the United States and we got a little down at the end of the day, we used to play the Sean Connery recording of Ithaca on YouTube with the beautiful brogue he has. “His current literary companion, he says, is Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo.
Some of the most notable scenes in the film are centered on CCTV footage from inside the Ecuadorian embassy of Assange and Moris. They did not know at the time that they were being filmed. We see Assange skateboarding around his little room and eating a low-key Christmas meal with his dad and Moris. “It’s the embassy’s footage from the security firm,” Lawrence said. It contains scenes of Assange’s meetings with his lawyers and doctors – and was reportedly delivered to the United States every 15 days. “Stella was contacted by one of the security guards, who warned her about it,” he adds. “She stopped going to the embassy at that point. Really grubby stuff.”
Moris discusses it in Ithaca: “The whole place was basically plagued by the CIA … we found out there were plans to kill Julian by poisoning him.” She also talks about the similarities between Assange and his father, and how “Julian always knew he was different … he felt like an alien.” Also striking is the presence of Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, whose quote opens the film: “Torture is a tool used to send a warning to others. It is most effective when applied in public. In Julians In each case, they have seized it, despite obstacles we can scarcely imagine. “
Lawerence believed Melzer’s contribution was key. “When he published his results in 2019 [that Assange was a victim of torture] it really gave a boost to the movement. It really forms a backdrop for the film, as it is someone stepping in from the outside. I think he offers a new entrance, just like John himself. It feels like one of a long line of doorways where one can get into the story. “Shipton is just as overwhelmed that Melzer, who is from Switzerland, calls him” an angel. “
Also crucial are the interviews Shipton gives in the Chelsea House, which the crew shared during the extradition hearing. They are sometimes carried out with reluctance and irritation at the end of a day’s campaign, and before he has had his evening glass of wine. “He’s like Dostoevsky’s great inquisitor,” says Shipton of Lawrence, who had 15 hours of these interviews to edit. “He keeps digging away.” Shipton has still not seen the finished film. “I’m a little scared of it. I don’t want to see myself stumbling over sentences or pontifying. I’m just happy if others see it and understand what we as a family are trying to do.”
Some of Assange’s high-profile supporters also have. Daniel Ellsberg, who himself was imprisoned in 1973 for exposing the Pentagon Papers, notes: “If Julian is extradited to the United States to face these charges, he will be the first journalist and publisher – but not the last.” Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is being interviewed outside of Old Bailey, and the film’s soundtrack is by Brian Eno, another longtime supporter. Donald Trump appears briefly in news images, declaring “I LOVE WikiLeaks!” and there are footage of the failed attempts to obtain a last-minute pardon from him. Assange and Moris’ prison wedding in March, attended by their two young sons, Max and Gabriel, who were conceived at the embassy, is also included; and we meet Shipton’s own five-year-old, Severine, before returning to her mother in Australia.
Despite the seriousness of the subject, Ithaka has some touching offbeat moments. In one scene, Moris, on the phone to Assange in Belmarsh, steps outside and the clip of a passing horse can be heard. “It’s a good sound,” Julian remarks.
“I thought it was such a beautiful moment,” Lawrence says. “A man who was imprisoned listened to the sounds of the outside world and had a deep understanding of them, after not hearing them for so long.” In another scene, Shipton reflects, “It’s been 11 years since Julian was in the company of a tree or a plant or a caterpillar or a butterfly.” Lawrence hopes this less traditional approach will help the film reach a wider audience – he cites Errol Morris, Frederick Wiseman, Joe Berlinger, Michael Winterbottom and Tom Zubrycki as documentaries he admires.
Assange has at times been a problematic figure, one who has fallen out spectacularly with many journalists – not least some in the Guardian and New York Times. But even those who found him difficult are now arguing strongly against his imprisonment by US authorities, whose shameful – and unpunished – behavior he revealed through the data leaked to him by Chelsea Manning, who himself has suffered in prison. This behavior included the fatal shooting of Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists from a 2007 U.S. military Apache helicopter and details of the torture of prisoners arrested in Afghanistan.
Ithaca – by humanizing Assange through his sympathetic father, his loyal wife and his children and through the ghost of a gloomy American supermax prison and a reminder of what secrets WikiLeaks revealed – hopes to reach an audience that can play a role in stopping the kind of vengeful punishment WikiLeaks has so often revealed. For Shipton, the journey has certainly been long. Now he is waiting for the next adventures and discoveries.