Alex Gibney tries to capture the controversy, the media frenzy, the man behind the myth

Mar 22, 2013 12:37 GMT  ·  By

“We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks” premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to positive reviews, and will also open in theaters this spring.

Above is the first official trailer.

“We Steal Secrets” is a documentary, so don’t confuse it with the dramatized version of the WikiLeaks scandal starring Benedict Cumberbatch, “The Fifth Estate,” which is also coming out this year, only later.

“Filmed with the startling immediacy of unfolding history, Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is a riveting, multi-layered tale about transparency in the information age and our ever-elusive search for the truth,” a brief synopsis reads.

“Detailing the creation of Julian Assange’s controversial website, which facilitated the largest security breach in US history, the film charts the enigmatic Assange’s rise and fall in parallel with that of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the brilliant, troubled young soldier who downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from classified US military and diplomatic servers,” adds the same.

By the looks of the trailer, “We Steal Secrets” will attempt to capture the controversy and the media frenzy surrounding Assange’s huge information leak, but also to offer a look at the man behind the myth and the ideology that prompted him to act this way.

It will be out on May 24.