By Steven McIntosh, Leisure reporter
When hackers threatened to leak a film-maker’s nude images saved on her stolen laptop computer, she turned the cameras on herself to doc her ordeal.
Spanish director Patricia Franquesa was sitting in a café in Madrid when thieves made off along with her laptop computer in 2019.
Three months later, hackers obtained in contact along with her demanding cash, threatening to leak the intimate images she had saved on the machine if she did not pay up.
Franquesa did not know for positive – and nonetheless does not – whether or not the particular person making an attempt to extort her was the identical one who bodily stole the laptop computer.
However in a state of affairs the place victims have such little management, Franquesa was capable of doc the entire episode on movie from her perspective because it unfolded.
The result’s My Sextortion Diary, which has simply screened on the Sheffield Documentary Pageant.
“Making a documentary was my method of taking some management and energy,” Franquesa tells BBC Information. “It was my strategy to shield myself, not victimise myself and provides me some disassociation, it was like constructing a bubble.”
The gap offered by making the movie was precious, and in addition helped her course of what was happening. “It is nonetheless me in fact, however I wanted to separate myself. I used to be speaking about ‘Pati’, however there’s Pati the character and Pati the director.”
She jokes that it is darkly acceptable that such an ordeal “occurred to somebody who does documentaries, so it is the right alternative to show [the cameras] round”.
Taking, storing and sending nude images is solely regular to an entire technology which has grown up with the web.
Nevertheless it opens up an entire world of threat which these born in earlier a long time by no means confronted.
“My father took footage of my mom in a swimsuit which may have been a bit see-through,” Franquesa smiles as she remembers an period which appears tame by comparability. “However because the digital world got here to us, it is our new method of getting intimacy.”
In her case, the hackers confirmed how critical they have been by leaking among the pictures to her mates, household and colleagues, who they discovered by way of her social media contacts.
However Franquesa does make some progress because the movie progresses. Police write to her to inform her they’ve made an arrest after inspecting CCTV footage from the café – which she ultimately will get maintain of herself and contains within the movie.
It exhibits how the laptop computer was taken by three males, their faces blurred for the movie, working collectively from completely different positions inside the café.
However whatever the growing police investigation, hackers proceed with their makes an attempt to extort her.
Exhausted, out of choices and refusing to pay up, Franquesa ultimately decides to add the photographs to her personal social media – a horrible final resort, however one which took away the hackers’ energy.
“It was robust, I used to be crying,” she remembers. “It felt just like the final second of a marathon. I didn’t wish to put up the images, I hoped and ready for this particular person to cease, and also you see he isn’t stopping, so I had nothing else to do.”
Getting the hacker to cease was not her solely motivation, nevertheless. “It was for me to say, ‘hey, contacts, this hacker has these footage, he’s utilizing my contacts, assist me’.”
That altered the steadiness of energy considerably, and meant Franquesa might enlist her mates and followers to assist piece collectively an image of the hacker and their behaviour.
“Which modifications the components,” she says. “I needed my contacts to inform me after they obtained the images, as a result of then I’ll have extra proof to take to the police and maintain open the investigation.
“It was breaking the disgrace,” she displays. “The try by the opposite particular person to disgrace me is damaged as a result of I’m proudly owning my very own footage. After which it stopped, magically.”
The truth that the hacker ceased contact shortly after Franquesa uploaded the photographs suggests it was somebody who was already following her when she switched her accounts to personal after the primary blackmail try – however she nonetheless does not know who.
The documentary has gone down properly on the festivals it has already performed. Mark Adams of Enterprise Doc Europe described it as “a strong and provocative real-life story, prescient in reflecting the sad actuality dealing with these people who find themselves compelled to cope with the terrible behaviour of unscrupulous hackers”.
‘Bittersweet ending’
The person who bodily stole the laptop computer was ultimately jailed. However for Franquesa, the first concern was much less the laptop computer itself, and extra the way in which her personal information was subsequently used in opposition to her.
“He obtained sentenced to 10 months in jail, only for stealing the pc. And I managed, within the sentence of the choose, to say that he’s linked to attainable blackmail,” she explains.
Franquesa’s focus has since shifted to elevating consciousness of what occurred – and asking questions on how these prison networks function.
“I instructed the police, the man [who stole the laptop] is aware of what he did with the pc. And the police instructed me the pc wasn’t going to be recovered, and I mentioned, ‘I do know that, however what are they doing with the stolen units?’
“As a result of now there are loads of mafias. In Spain, you steal units and promote them, after which they go to individuals who hack the units and take the info, discover issues, and begin blackmailing. I wish to perceive what’s that system.”
She factors out: “It isn’t nearly justice in my case, as a result of it is form of over for me, however it’s for the police to grasp what’s going on in these sorts of circumstances. What’s the system of those mafias? If I used to be a police particular person, I’d be tremendous curious.”
The most important problem was tips on how to make one thing cinematic out of so little materials. Franquesa can solely doc her personal facet of the story, and a lot of the developments occur by way of written communication – emails from the hackers, letters from the police or messages between Franquesa and her mates.
The director “did not see it as a limitation” as the aim of the movie was to be a “digital diary”.
The hackers are represented by a digitally altered feminine voice, whereas textual content conversations are represented by digital speech bubbles which mimic WhatsApp threads.
Nevertheless it’s “additionally this type of storytelling that does not permit the movie to overstay its welcome, coming in at a decent hour,” famous Blake Williams of HyperReal Movie Membership.
“My Sextortion Diary is all the time partaking and finds a strategy to maintain the narrative transferring regardless of its unconventional strategy.”
The documentary ends previous to the sentencing, as a result of, Franquesa laughs, “We wanted to shut the movie in time for South by Southwest!” – the pageant the place the movie performed in March. She says some new textual content will now be added on the finish following the conviction.
Franquesa finally hopes the movie helps result in change, as a result of she feels that legal guidelines usually are not altering quick sufficient to maintain up with prison behaviour.
“I wish to scream that this isn’t working, the legal guidelines on our information. Our system that should shield us is transferring so slowly. There’s a drawback right here about which protections we now have.
“The one satisfaction of this case is we’re speaking about it now, the top of the movie is bittersweet, the success for Pati is making the movie, however the hacker and the justice is incomplete.”
She concludes: “I hope my case is used to grasp what [criminals] are doing, I am placing myself up entrance to allow them to examine my case and assist different individuals.”