"This documentary is an extension of the attempt to spread the word." Which is why the central drama of Truth in a Post Truth World isn't the relationship between the Bellingcat guys-they mostly communicate via Slack-or any one compelling character, but instead, what they find. "It’s five guys behind screens," Pool admits. "Anybody can do it if you want to you can step into the role of Bellingcat," he says.Īctually filming this work poses a cinematic challenge. The media industry is undergoing a tectonic shift, where a handful of volunteer researchers can have just as much of an impact as any pedigreed reporter at the paper of record. That's the message at the crux of the film, says Pool.
In an information landscape increasingly polluted with propaganda, misinformation, and sophisticated spin, it's more important than ever to use that information to verify the stories we're being sold.
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But perhaps even more importantly, it's also a reminder of how much deeply sensitive information is free for the taking online. The scene with Toler, Pool says, showcases how the Bellingcat investigators go about proving or disproving every photo, video, or news story that crosses their paths.
And it was Bellingcat that helped a group of online activists identify the assailants in a brutal attack at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, by scouring news and social media photos and obsessively mapping the constellation of moles on one guy's neck. It was Bellingcat, in collaboration with the Russian outlet The Insider, that identified the men believed to have poisoned former Russian military officer Sergei Skripal in the UK in 2018. It was Bellingcat that blamed the Russian army for the downing of MH 17, years before European officials confirmed those findings. The film tells the story of Bellingcat, a collective of investigative researchers, many of whom started as amateurs, who spend their off hours meticulously stringing together kernels of information they find online, in order to expose some of the world’s most notorious operatives. This is director Hans Pool’s favorite scene in his new documentary Truth in a Post Truth World, which will screen this Sunday at the South by Southwest film festival. "Anybody can do it if you want to you can step into the role of Bellingcat." As an extra bit of confirmation, Toler explains, the fuel prices on the sign in the video match historical records for the fuel prices at that very gas station on that very day. Not only that, but he can see the same cars in the gas station parking lot that appear in the video. He zooms in, and sure enough, he spots the outline of a white truck with a heavy shadow behind it, making its way down the road. He finds the gas station from the video on the map, and then scrolls back in time to see the satellite image of that area taken on July 17, 2014. Toler then navigates over to Google Earth, and drills down to the town of Makiivka. The gas station and the prices on the board, he explains, are both clues to where and when the video was filmed. A few seconds later, Toler presses pause, as the sign advertising the gas station’s prices comes into view. There’s a Jeep following close behind, and a gas station to the right. It’s attached to a bright red trailer, which carries a Buk missile launcher bearing a resemblance to the one thought to have been used in the attack. He trains his eyes on the screen and watches as, about 45 seconds in, a white Volvo truck enters the frame. But to Toler, who’s part of a global team of digital detectives known as Bellingcat, it’s a goldmine. To the untrained eye, the video is awfully dull.
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It’s dashcam footage, supposedly captured by a driver in the town of Makiivka in eastern Ukraine, showing a Russian military convoy on its way to shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight 17 on July 17, 2014. Aric Toler’s face is illuminated only by the glow of the video playing on his laptop.
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