The Great Hack

The Great Hack examines how personal data became a tool for political influence, centring on the Cambridge Analytica affair and its links to the 2016 United States presidential election and the Brexit referendum. The documentary follows people drawn into the story from different directions: a former business development director at the data firm, a professor pursuing a legal claim over his own information, a solicitor specialising in data rights, and a journalist investigating the company's activities. Their paths converge on questions about who collects personal information, how it is used, and what recourse individuals have.

Jehane Noujaim directs alongside Karim Amer, with Pedro Kos, Erin Barnett and Amer sharing writing credits and Kos and Amer producing with Geralyn White Dreyfous. For Noujaim, it is the second film in the filmography recorded here, arriving fifteen years after Control Room. The credited cast numbers twenty-one, with participants appearing as themselves.

Released in January 2019, the film runs 114 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7 out of 10 from roughly 26,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.9 out of 10 from about 600 votes, indicating a wide audience reach alongside a smaller dedicated following. A critics' rating of 7.1 out of 10 from 55 reviews places critical appraisal close to the audience response.