Alumna Erin Barnett’s new film to host world premiere at Sundance Film Festival

“The Great Hack,” a new documentary edited and co-written by Elon graduate Erin Barnett ’09, will host its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent film festival in the United States.

Directed by Academy Award nominees Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, the 135-minute film documents how people are being exploited and vital elements of societal infrastructure such as democracy are being manipulated in the digital age. The documentary uses the personal journeys of players on different sides of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data breach as a jumping-off point.

Sundance will host several screenings of the film between Jan. 24 and Feb. 3, at locations in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, and at the Sundance Mountain Resort. “The Great Hack” was one of 112 films selected by the festival from 14,259 submissions across 152 countries.

Barnett won’t be the only Elon connection at Sundance this year. Fellow alumnus Matt Jenkins ’09 served as a producer for “Kaiju Confidential,” a virtual reality comedy film also premiering at Sundance. Additionally, Assistant Professor J McMerty ’00 will lead his "The Sundance Experience" class to Utah for the 11-day festival, offering students and alumni in attendance wisdom sessions and networking opportunities.  

Just a decade removed from her Elon graduation, Barnett has worked on several notable projects, making a name for herself as a documentary editor. Her past projects include “Food Chains,” which casts a spotlight on agricultural labor in the United States; "Unseen Enemy," a CNN documentary exploring global pandemic; and "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine," a film by Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney.

​As an undergraduate, Barnett completed two films — “Bridging the Digital Divide,” shot at the first-ever global Internet Governance Forum for the Imagining the Internet Center, and “My Name is Anita,” about Namibian AIDS activist Anita Isaacs for Elon’s Project Pericles.

In November, the former elondocs member was presented with the program’s Emerging Documentarian Award, recognizing an alumnus/alumna who has graduated in the last decade and is already excelling in the professional documentary field.