Congratulations to Ben Lawrence on the nomination of ITHAKA for the 2022 AACTA Award for Best Documentary

AACTA is excited to announce the nominees for the 2022 AACTA Award for Best Documentary, which includes Ben Lawrence’s latest documentary ITHAKA.

Filmed over two years across the UK, Europe and the US, this documentary is a moving and intimate portrayal of one father’s fight to save his son. It exposes the brutal realities of the campaign to free Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder and the world’s most famous political prisoner, who has become an emblem of an international arm wrestle over freedom of journalism, government corruption and unpunished war crimes.

With Julian facing a 175-year sentence if extradited to the US, his family members are confronting the prospect of losing him forever to the abyss of the US justice system.  This David-and-Goliath struggle is personal – and, with Julian’s health declining in a British maximum-security prison, the clock is ticking.

Julian’s father John Shipton and fiancé Stella Moris have joined forces to advocate for Julian on this international odyssey. As they rally a world-wide network of supporters and politicians, they cautiously step into the media’s glare – and are forced to confront the events that made Julian a global flashpoint.

To learn more about the documentary and the cause, please see the film’s official website and trailer.

The documentary is also currently streaming in full on ABC iView.