The Great Hack

"They took your data. Then they took control."

2019 1h 54m EN

👍

6.9

SOLID

🍅

85%

FRESH

👌

METACRITIC

⭐

IMDB

★6.9TMDB · 604🍅85%Rotten Tomatoes●67Metacritic★7IMDB · 25,928

Documentary

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Data—arguably the world’s most valuable asset—is being weaponized to wage cultural and political wars. The dark world of data exploitation is uncovered through the unpredictable, personal journeys of players on different sides of the explosive Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data story.

“They took your data. Then they took control.”

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Where to watch · US

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Cast

Brittany Kaiser
Self - Former Dir. of Business Development, Cambridge Analytica
David Carroll
Self - Associate Professor Parsons School of Design
Paul-Olivier Dehaye
Self - Founder @PersonalDataIO
Ravi Naik
Self - Data Rights Solicitor
Julian Wheatland
Self - Former COO/CFO Cambridge Analytica/SCL
Carole Cadwalladr
Self - Investigative Journalist for The Guardian
Christopher Wiley
Self - Former Cambridge Analytica Employee and Whistleblower
Paul Hilder
Self - Writer/Political Technologist

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Karim Amer
Writers: Karim Amer, Erin Barnett, Pedro Kos
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 7

ERA

Did you know

Released 7 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Karim Amer, shot by Basil Childers. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Gil Talmi. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 7

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Erin Barnett shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 7

CAST

Did you know

Brittany Kaiser and David Carroll and Paul-Olivier Dehaye carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 7

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "They took your data. Then they took control.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 7

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt4736550 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Karim Amer directs. Basil Childers behind the camera. Gil Talmi scores. Erin Barnett cuts. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Released 7 years ago.
2Directed by Karim Amer, shot by Basil Childers. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
3Original score by Gil Talmi. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
4Editor Erin Barnett shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
5Brittany Kaiser and David Carroll and Paul-Olivier Dehaye carry the top of the cast.
6Marketing tagline: "They took your data. Then they took control.".
7IMDB entry: tt4736550 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
8Classified under 11 themes, including "propaganda", "politics", "united kingdom", "social network".

The technical file

Cinematography: Basil Childers
Original score: Gil Talmi
Editing: Erin Barnett
Runtime: 114 min · 1h 54m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Original language: EN
IMDB: The Great Hack (2019)
Rotten Tomatoes: 85% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 67/100
IMDB rating: 7/10 · 25,928 votes
MPAA: TV-MA

Awards

Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy. 1 win & 4 nominations total

Also by

Karim Amer

Stills · wallpapers

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

CinemaSerf2026-09-14
★ 7/10
With so much currently being said about the abilities of AI to run amok, it's quite useful to turn the clock back to this documentary and appreciate that many of the issues being discussed now could have been foretold a decade ago. The focus of this rather lengthy and erratically paced film is a company called Cambridge Analytica - a business built from nothing that specialised in tracking and profiling unsuspecting internet users and then selling on that data to anyone interested in exploiting it - from corporate America to political America. Along the way, this makes a decent attempt to unpick the procedures rife amidst a compete lack of adequate regulation (or any desire to craft any) and I wondered if anyone were to ask Sir Tim Berners-Lee nowadays what he made of the way his creation designed to share knowledge across the academic community had been hijacked by propagandists and profiteers the world over, might he just have cut off his own hands? This is actually quite an informative piece of film-making that doesn't imerse us in acronyms and tech-speak. Instead, it uses more readily quantifiable examples to illustrate just how our data - well their data, really - is crafted, collected and used - almost always without our appreciation of it's accuracy, value or ability to view and/or permanently delete from servers protected as much by legislation as by firewalls. Much of it's credibility comes from poacher turned gamekeeper Brittany Kaiser who held a series of senior posts across this power-hungry industry but who jumped ship when allegations of illegal activities and electioneering emerged, behaving in her own latter day Damascene fashion and exposing some of the excesses of these hitherto unfettered enterprises. It's not so much that these companies actually fiddled anything directly, it is more that they knew how to manipulate the subjects - us. Whether it was the US election that first sent Donald Trump to the White House, or Brexit, or an election in Trinidad - each event is presented here as an opportunity to demonstrate just how inter-connected these entities were/are and at how shewdly this information is used to steer people as if they were sheep being unknowingly coralled into or out of a pen. What is also quite concerning is that much of this "farming" is carried out amidst a sea of apathy and convenience from a population that simply can't be bothered worrying about anything - even when it is informed. The film is far too long, though, and I think also prone to a little rambling that rather detracts from it's potency. Shave half an hour from it, and also possibly subject the plausible (on her own terms) Kaiser to more independent scrutiny and we could have a feature every politician currently acquiescing to the lucrative demands of unelected and exploitative entrepreneurs in the US, China, India and beyond could watch and then perhaps each of us could be given a "kill switch" of our own to disable systems that we ought to be auto opted-out of rather than auto opted-in. Our political masters are far too closely embroiled and incompetent to take any sort of objective stance on reining in these mighty corporations - especially when they employ a great many people and cite national defence as a benefit of their operations; and here we are clearly shown that it's ultimately going to be up to us to withdraw our participation if we want enduring change.

Production companies