It surely is the age of disclosure. Dan Farah’s new documentary, The Age of Disclosure, premiered at the big deal South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival last weekend (8 March), in Austin, Texas, to a world waiting with bated breath (at least among those who follow the subject). What’s it about? For starters it promises to, ‘reveal an 80 year cover-up of the existence of non-human intelligent life‘.

I’m going to quote the film’s website here (because the movie’s not been released yet and I don’t want to make inaccurate claims):

‘…is an unprecedented and revelatory documentary featuring 34 senior members of the U.S. Government, military, and intelligence community… The film exposes the profound impact the situation has on the future of humanity, while providing a look behind-the-scenes with those at the forefront of the bi-partisan disclosure effort.’

If you read the reviews (here’s one from The Hollywood REPORTER) and online commentary, you’d be forgiven for thinking a) it was the second coming or, b) a merry-go-round of familiar talking heads making the usual revelations about secret, deep black programmes and the decades-long cover-up regarding crashed UFOs and retrieved alien bodies.

What I think is different this time is several-fold. Firstly, it’s the mainstream pitch of the documentary. It’s been made by a big-name Hollywood producer (Farah himself, the producer for Spielberg’s Ready Player One – more on Spielberg shortly) with obvious intentions to get the film sold to the widest possible distributor, i.e. a streaming service à la Netflix or Amazon. Perhaps even a cinema release. This is important. Many keen followers of the UFO topic complain about a lack of cut through. So many brilliant UFO docs have been made in the past decade or two but are marginalised because of their lack of mainstream promotion; often found only on YouTube or the satellite documentary channels. Times are changing though. Documentaries in the last couple of years have seen efforts from Spielberg’s own studios (Netflix’s Encounters) and JJ Abrams’ UFO, that aired on Showtime four years ago. Still, the darling of the UFO crowd, and arguably the best documentarian of the subject, James Fox, is an independent. However, it’s to be hoped the cascade effect of more eyes on the subject, drawn in by big-budget releases such as Farah’s, will only increase visibility of Fox’s own work, and many others, in the coming years.

Secondly, it’s the ‘credibility’ of those ‘..34 senior members of the U.S. Government‘. Such an assembled crew of high-ranking, respected individuals, and other academics and scientists, is pretty much unprecedented. Here’s a roll call: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator Mike Rounds, Jay Stratton (former DIA official, Director of the US Government’s UAP Task Force), General Jim Clapper (former Director of National Intelligence), Mike Gold (NASA UAP Study Team member), Admiral Tim Gallaudet (Former Navy Chief Oceanographer), Brett Feddersen (former Director of Aviation Security on the White House’s National Security Council), Jim Semivan (former senior CIA official), Representative Carson, Mike Gallagher (former Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party), Christopher Mellon (former Department of Defense official), senior scientist from multiple Government UAP programs, such as Dr. Garry Nolan, quantum physicist Hal Puthoff Ph.D., astrophysicist Eric Davis Ph.D. and many more, including military eyewitnesses.

Thirdly, it’s precisely what these interviewees are saying, beyond the idea of a government cover-up, that makes this movie interesting in terms of its ‘splash’ potential. In essence, we’re not alone, we have the recovered craft. We might even have the bodies. Bold claims. Think about this for a moment. Senior government officials risking ridicule talking openly on a subject often stigmatised. Politicians including the current Secretary of State. Folks with careers and reputations. 

The film follows hot on the heels of several whistleblowers, including former US Tier 1 operator (among the elite of special operations forces), Jake Barber, who claimed to have direct experience of said US crash retrieval programmes, even sharing video evidence of a supposed egg-shaped craft slung below a helicopter.

Back to Spielberg. It hasn’t escaped attention that his next film, due for release in 2026 (shooting is reportedly underway), is called (yes, you guessed it), Disclosure. Not much is known about the movie, although it’s confirmed to be about the phenomenon. Spielberg has an abiding fascination with UFOs and aliens, going all the way back to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, through E.T., to the recent-ish War of the Worlds. Is he sensing which way the wind’s blowing, with an uptick in public interest in all things UFO and disclosure, and wants to be at the front of the queue when the subject truly enters the mainstream? Maybe Spielberg himself wants to drive the topic into the zeitgeist. 

I’ve talked about disclosure and UFOs in several of my recent posts and you can find them here.

All added up, there’s definitely something in the air. Especially when squared with everything happening in the political sphere since the New York Times’ article of December 2017 which arguably restarted the UFO phenomenon’s renaissance in the public’s imagination. 

Will any of this nudge the dial towards disclosure? We’ll have to wait and see. Certainly many of the pro-disclosure folks in Trump’s government are busy with arguably more pressing, prosaic terrestrial matters (Rubio, Gabbard, Ratcliffe etc). But then who said a government needed to make such a disclosure… which brings me to my final ‘age of disclosure’ reference.

I started writing my own ‘disclosure’ back in 2021, or thereabouts. The Otero County Disclosure. My debut novel, out this summer. I spent two years writing and researching and a further year working with my editor. In that time the wider disclosure narrative waxed and waned and at one point I thought actual disclosure might happen before my book saw the light of day. That’s why I’ve decided to publish now. Just in time. I hope to ride a wave of disclosure intrigue fed by the current crop of movies and documentaries. We’ll see. I only ask that the POTUS doesn’t disclose until my book’s had a chance at its own revelation. 

If you enjoyed Close Encounters, or TV’s Severance, Dave Eggers’ book The Circle (also a movie starring Tom Hanks), and any number of other conspiracy and UFO films, shows and books, I think you’re going to enjoy The Otero County Disclosure…

Thanks for reading.

Huey