The term “Fifth Estate” is used to describe any class or group in society other than The Clergy (First Estate), The Nobility (Second Estate), The Commoners (Third Estate), and The Press (Fourth Estate).

Making reference to the medieval concept of “Three estates of the realm” (Clergy, Nobility and Commons) and to a more recently developed model of “Four Estates”, which encompasses the media, “Fifth Estate of the Realm”…proposes a broader perspective in which civilians or anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can contribute to the global political change and security.

The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world’s most legendary media organizations combined. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society-and what are the costs of exposing them?