Igor Lopatonok is a Ukrainian-American director and producer, whose 2016 hit documentary, Ukraine on Fire, stands as one of the most poignant films made on what has become the new epicenter of geopolitics. In late 2024, he released another hard-hitting documentary, Hunter’s Laptop – Requiem for Ukraine, which attempts to unravel the enigma of the notorious “laptop from hell” – a scandal which became a defining moment in this current tumultuous period in U.S. politics. The film uses the infamous laptop plot as a master key to open the door to a much wider and darker world – bringing together three epic stories woven into one; Washington’s 2014 regime change operation in Maidan leading to the destabilization of Ukraine, the Biden family crime syndicate and how it shaped successive White House administrations, and the massive upheaval in U.S. politics that was precipitated by the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016 and his battle with the deep state – culminating with an attempted assassination during the U.S. 2024 presidential election.
It contains all the elements of a political thriller – spies, lies, corruption, cover-ups, bribery, secret tapes, and election interference, and features a number of striking interview subjects including best-selling author Miranda Devine, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former Ukrainian parliamentarian and corruption investigator Andrei Derkach, Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer, award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon, and others, as well as key excerpts from previous exchanges with Oliver Stone, Vladimir Putin, and the late American journalism icon Robert Parry.
The film opens with a stunning scene at the historic site of the Khatan Massacre in Belarus, and quickly cuts to an underground studio setting where interviewer Italian-American journalist and lawyer Simona Mangiante meets with political insider in-exile Derkach. This leads to a daisy chain of events, beginning with Democratic Party corruption in Ukraine, to the conspiracy to destroy Trump’s inner circle, starting with his 2016 campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and subsequent exposé featuring secret recordings of incriminating conversations between then Vice President Joe Biden and former Ukraine leader Petro Poroshenko.
Adding to the dramatic tension, is the fact that Bannon’s piece was recorded just days before he was carted off to federal prison, presumably on highly dubious, fabricated charges – ironically relating to much of the subject matter covered in this documentary. Both Bannon and Giuliani’s illustration of the deep state is instructive, if not harrowing. Giuliani, the former federal prosecutor and mayor of New York described it as “the mafia on steroids.” According to Bannon, the specter became all too real when Trump assumed power in 2017, explaining, “There is is no deep state – they’re in your face. When you’re in the White House, they’re in your grill. Bannon goes on to offer a more granular description, as “a combination of law enforcement, a weaponized DOJ and FBI, a combination of different elements of the DNI – the 17 intelligence agencies we have that costs almost $1 trillion a year (when you really add it up), and the Pentagon, and other aspects of the intelligence community that forms this kind of deep state, which his gonna roll like it’s going roll.” That power and influence was then deployed to head-off and bury the Hunter Biden laptop story – which played a pivotal role in swinging the 2020 election.
There are many bombshells in this film, but in terms of coup de grâces, one of the most powerful was a rare on-camera testimony from Devon Archer, the first key witness in validating the Hunter Biden laptop story. When the story went public, Archer was able to immediately cross reference the leaked emails – which matched with his own correspondences. Despite this, the Official Washington, the mainstream media, Big Tech and the deep state intelligence apparatus – were all colluding to portray the laptop story as some elaborate “Russian hack and leak” plot designed to damage Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. The film also shows the power of real investigative journalism, and tells the story of John Solomon, whose reporting on Russiagate and Biden corruption was instrumental in breaking the story, and was vindicated after the FBI discovered that they themselves were Solomon’s confidential source for the story – a damning revelation that ultimately forced the government to shut down its investigation into Giuliani. “Just the fact we’re having this conversation, I think helps a lot to educate the public. If you think about how this country started – with things like Thomas Paine’s pamphlets – that rose an entire country to fight tyranny and become a country itself (the United States of America). And yet today, so much of newspapers have become myopic; we either analyze what happened yesterday, or we write about what we think will happen tomorrow, and so few people are trying to find out what’s really going on,” said Solomon at The Media and Whistleblowing conference broadcast on CSPAN.
The action and drama is also interspersed with informal exchanges, across the table as it were, between director Lopotonak and journalist Simona Mangiante which reveal a number of unique insights, including Lopatonok’s personal experience and interactions with the current Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky – from his career as a vaudeville TV comedian and sitcom actor, to his unlikely ascendancy to power in Kiev, a process underwritten largely by oligarch Igor Kolomoyskyi. Lopotonak was also able to include timely images of the attempted assassination of candidate Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024, underlining a clear and present danger, which undoubtedly gives the overall story another level of urgency.
Overall, this is a visually stunning production which is elegantly underpinned with subtle cinematic score, all of which provides for an extremely entertaining experience. In terms of films made around this subject genre, this one has to be ranked at the top of its class – essential viewing for anyone who really wants to understand this very complex and contentious period in American history. Watch the official trailer:
.
WATCH FULL DOCUMENTARY ON DEMAND:
https://watch.salemnow.com/series/iO8ApZbdaPKE-hunters-laptop–requiem-for-ukraine
Run time: 1 hr 8 min
Directed by Igor Lopatonok
Written by George Eliason
Production: Global Tree Pictures
SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HERE
READ MORE UKRAINE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Ukraine Files
SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
