Submarine’s ‘Bellingcat’ premiers at IDFA 2018

The world premiere of the groundbreaking film BELLINGCAT – TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD will be at this year’s IDFA Film Festival. The film is directed by Hans Pool, produced by Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix from Submarine and co-produced by the VPRO.

BELLINGCAT – TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD follows the revolutionary rise of the “citizen investigative journalist” collective known as Bellingcat, a group of online researchers dedicated to exposing the truth of impenetrable news stories from around the world – from the downing of the MH17 plane in Ukraine to Skripal case; the poisoning of a Russian spy in the United Kingdom. From his Leicester home, de facto leader Eliot and his team of truth-seekers put newspapers, networks and governments to the test.

Bellingcat uses cutting-edge digital techniques to create a faster and more innovative approach than traditional research journalism. For the first time, Bellingcat investigators in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and the United States have given exclusive access to filmmaker Hans Pool, allowing him to follow the group on their path to demonstrate the power of open source investigation.

Bellingcat’s impact is examined through the lens of their current investigations, as well as the high-profile conflicts they’ve previously reported. With global powers being less reliable and traditional newspapers declining in reach and budget – how does Bellingcat, dismissed by some critics as an assortment of “armchair researchers”, attain such a prominent status in the new world order of news? The filmmaker takes us on a quest to understand the group’s innovations, challenging our concept of journalism.

Director Hans Pool: “I believe that we need to fight against injustice, especially in this time, and that is exactly what Bellingcat does”

Producer Femke Wolting: “We are at a period in time where “Truth” seems more illusive and fluid and tends to serve an agenda instead of objectively reporting. With the rise of the internet, it is difficult to know what is real and corporations and governments are leveraging personalized ways to influence individuals. Bellincat is a group of individuals who are taking those powerful tools and platforms. Truth is something worth fighting for and this is a story about the people who are fighting for all of us”

Hans Pool (The Netherlands, 1962) is an award-winning director and cinematographer, who combines a journalistic approach with intellectual depth. He masterfully conveys topics that are difficult to grasp with a cinematic language that is understood by all. Previous films include Putin’s Olympic Dream and Looking for an Icon.

Submarine is an independent production company with offices in Amsterdam and Los Angeles that produces drama series, documentaries, animation and transmedia such as Peter Greenaway’s feature Eisenstein in Guanajuato and the Emmy Award-winning documentary Last Hijack. In 2017, Submarine produced Brian Knappenberg’s acclaimed film Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press, which premiered at Sundance and was acquired as a Netflix Original. Most recently, Submarine produced Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams’ film American Jail for CNN and the BBC about the prison-industrial complex, and More Human Than Human, a documentary exploring the rise of artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity. Submarine is currently co-producing (Undone with Tornante US), an upcoming Amazon Original series from the creator and showrunners of Bojack Horseman. 

BELLINGCAT – TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD is made with the support of NPO Fund, Dutch Film Fund, Netherlands Film Production Incentive, CoBO en DocSociety.