Julian Assange open to political action as Cannes hosts documentary

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is at the Cannes Film Festival for the documentary "The Six Billion Dollar Man," is assessing how to become politically active again once he has recovered from prison, said his wife, Stella.

Assange, 53, returned to his native Australia after pleading guilty last June under an agreement with US officials to one count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security materials.

The plea ended Assange's five-year stay in a British prison, which followed seven years at the Ecuador embassy as he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden on assault allegations. Assange denied those allegations and called them a pretext to extradite him to the US over WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks in 2010 released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - the largest security breaches of its kind in US military history - along with swaths of diplomatic cables.

Julian and Stella Assange, wearing a brooch with a picture of British designer Vivienne Westwood holding a sign saying "Stop Killing," walked the red carpet on Wednesday evening.

Canary in a Coal Mine

The documentary from Emmy-winning director Eugene Jarecki takes on the tone of a high-tech international thriller to recount Assange's fight against extradition, using WikiLeaks footage and archives, and previously unpublished evidence.

Jarecki, who began filming before Assange was released, said he never expected to see him walk around Cannes as a free man.

By inviting Assange, the festival was sending a message about the need for freedom of information and a free press, Jarecki told Reuters, as those values are in decline in many parts of the world according to an index from Reporters without Borders.