TIFF 2020 | Enemies of the State
BY KRISTAL SOTOMAYOR ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2020
This TIFF 2020 coverage is published in collaboration with the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival.
Promotional image for Enemies of the State. (Courtesy of TIFF)
The rise of streaming platforms has changed the landscape of commercial documentaries. Stranger-than-fiction stories with dynamic characters, like Tiger King, are overnight successes that captivate audiences from across the globe. Enemies of the State, directed by Sonia Kennebeck, takes the viewer on a wild ride of a family fleeing across the border into Canada.
Sonia Kennebeck is a Malaysian independent documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist with over 15 years of experience. In 2015, she was one of the twenty-five new faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine. Kennebeck’s first feature documentary, National Bird, followed whistleblowers who expose the U.S. drone war. Her follow-up film, Enemies of the State, combines Kennebeck's investigative reporting background with a cinematic visual style reminiscent of executive producer Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line).
The DeHearts are an ordinary American family of three with a background in military service. Father Paul is a minister and former military intelligence officer, mother Leann was an Electronic Warfare Voice Intercept Operator during the Cold War, and son Matthew “Matt” was an Air National Guard veteran. The facade quickly evaporated in 2009, shortly after Matt was Honorably Discharged from the Air National Guard.
Matt is a hacker hosting a mirror site, “The Shell,” for Wikileaks. One day, classified documents are uploaded on his server by an anonymous source. Terrified of the secrets revealed, Matt takes screenshots and deletes the originals. He shuts down “The Shell” and saves the screenshots on two USB sticks.
A year later, law enforcement raids the DeHart household seizing all electronics. Detectives in Tennessee allege that Matt was soliciting child pornography from two young boys ages 14 and 16. According to the detectives, Matt met the boys through the online video game World of Warcraft. The allegations are seen by the DeHarts as a means to target Matt because of the sensitive information on “The Shell.”
Matt ends up trying to seek asylum at the Russian and Venezuelan embassies in Washington, DC but is denied. Months later, Matt is detained for the child pornography charges and allegedly drugged and interrogated by the FBI. The DeHart family manages to flee to Canada for political asylum based on the U.N. Convention Against Torture. At the border, Matt turns in the USB sticks to the Canadian authorities. They are never returned.
Set amid the backdrop of Chelsea Manning’s Wikileaks exposé of Iraq and Afghan War atrocities, the story of the DeHart family is a strange tale of hacking and whistleblowing. Enemies of the State leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. It is never clear whether Matt is guilty of the child pornography charges or whether the government is truly hunting Matt for the information on “The Shell.” What the film does reveal is the underlying paranoia of being monitored and surveilled by the government for actions that may pose a national security risk.
For many communities of color, police surveillance has long been an issue leading to unlawful detainment and arrests. Enemies of the State brings to the forefront the fragility of our supposed freedoms guaranteed by the U.S Constitution. In the end, it makes audience members question their actions online. Might our interactions online be seen as harmful toward the government? Might we ever be in a situation where we have to blast music in our homes at midnight, communicate via notes that are burned and flushed down the toilet, and have to flee to Canada for asylum? Might our faces inhabit the promo images for the film with the blacked out eyes?
To learn more about Enemies of the State, connect with the team at Codebreaker Films.
