The Age of Disclosure: Difference between revisions

Line 62: Line 62:

===Scientists===

===Scientists===

Joshua Semeter, a [[Boston University]] professor of [[electrical engineering]] who was a member of the [[NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team]] was skeptical of the film’s allegations, “I have seen no evidence that the government has been hiding anything“. He was critical of the interview format used in the documentary, “ultimately, testimonies are simply not enough. They need to be backed up with evidence.”<ref name=barlow>{{cite web |last1=Barlow |first1=Rich |title=New Film The Age of Disclosure Alleges Government Cover-Up of UFOs, but BU Expert Is Skeptical |url=https://www.bu.edu/articles/2025/ufo-news-government-cover-up/ |website=BU Today |publisher=[[Boston University]] |access-date=July 9, 2025 |quote=Joshua Semeter (ENG’92,’97), a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University’s College of Engineering, says there has been investigation — and he knows. He served on a 2023 NASA panel that studied the evidence for UAPs, including classified congressional testimony by David Grusch, a former Air Force and intelligence officer…[Semeter:] All the evidence I have seen is now in the public domain and has been highlighted in multiple documentaries. }}</ref>

Joshua Semeter, a [[Boston University]] professor of [[electrical engineering]] who was a member of the [[NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team]] was skeptical of the film’s allegations, “I have seen no evidence that the government has been hiding anything. , testimonies are simply not enough. They need to be backed up with evidence.”<ref name=barlow>{{cite web |last1=Barlow |first1=Rich |title=New Film The Age of Disclosure Alleges Government Cover-Up of UFOs, but BU Expert Is Skeptical |url=https://www.bu.edu/articles/2025/ufo-news-government-cover-up/ |website=BU Today |publisher=[[Boston University]] |access-date=July 9, 2025 |quote=Joshua Semeter (ENG’92,’97), a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University’s College of Engineering, says there has been investigation — and he knows. He served on a 2023 NASA panel that studied the evidence for UAPs, including classified congressional testimony by David Grusch, a former Air Force and intelligence officer…[Semeter:] All the evidence I have seen is now in the public domain and has been highlighted in multiple documentaries. }}</ref>

===Skeptics===

===Skeptics===

2025 American documentary film

The Age of Disclosure
Release poster
Directed by	Dan Farah
Produced by	Dan Farah
Narrated by	Luis Elizondo
Cinematography	Vincent Wrenn
Edited by	Spencer Averick Colin Frederick
Music by	Blair Mowat
Production company	Farah Films
Release dates
Running time	109 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Age of Disclosure is a 2025 American documentary film directed and produced by Dan Farah, where former United States of America government officials claim UFO conspiracy theories^[1][2][3] that extraterrestrial intelligence is present on Earth and has been subject to a decades-long government cover-up.^[4][5][6] The film assembles interviews with current and former officials from the U.S. military, intelligence community, and Congress to advance conspiracy theories concerning recovered alien materials, secret programs, and institutional secrecy.^[1][2][3] The film premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. It was then released theatrically in three theaters and via streaming. It received mixed reviews from critics,^[7] with scientists and skeptical commentators disputing its evidentiary standards.^[8][9]

Synopsis

Age of Disclosure includes interviews with former and present United States elected, military, and intelligence officials, as well as scientists and government associates, some of whom claim the U.S. government has been aware of alien life and retrieving their technology since 1947. Luis Elizondo, a former U.S. Department of Defense employee, narrates the film, and recalls being assigned to Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) in 2009. Elizondo and AATIP scientist colleagues Hal Puthoff and Eric Davis allege, among other claims, that they discovered the existence of a secret government program (“The Legacy Program”) that investigated and concealed evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence for more than 80 years.^[10][11] Jay Stratton, the former director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office‘s (AARO) 2017-2022 UAP Task Force (UAPTF), claims there is a race among governments to reverse engineer alien technology.^[12] Stratton compares it to the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons in World War II “on steroids”, and that the nation to succeed first will lead “for years to come”.^[12]

The film features members of the United States Congress, including Kirsten Gillibrand, Marco Rubio and Mike Rounds of the Senate, along with Tim Burchett, André Carson, Dan Crenshaw, Mike Gallagher and Anna Paulina Luna of the House of Representatives.^[13] James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, claims that UFOs are found near Area 51.^[10] Christopher C. Miller, former acting Secretary of Defense, claims he was informed by intelligence officials that he lacked “need to know” about UFO and UAP-related affairs.

Military fighter pilots connected with the Pentagon UFO videos and reports are interviewed, including U.S. Navy pilots David Fravor, Alex Dietrich, Ryan Graves, as well as former U.S. Air Force pilot and NORAD director, Colonel James D. Cobb.^[13] Graves and Brett Feddersen, formerly of the United States National Security Council and a director at the Federal Aviation Administration, discuss aviation safety concerns related to UFOs and UAP.^[14][15][16]

Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, describes learning of the topic from Elizondo.^[17] Tim Gallaudet, former commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, speculates UFOs might come from Earth’s oceans instead of outer space.^[18][10] Retired U.S. Army colonel and Northrop Grumman executive Karl Nell, along with members of the UAPTF, Travis S. Taylor and Mike Gold, relay their experiences in the 2010s.^[19][13] Garry Nolan of Stanford University School of Medicine and Mike Flaherty, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer, discuss biological effects allegedly linked to UAP reports.^[20][10][21]. Former Air Force Lieutenant Robert Jacobs describes witnessing what he believed to be a UFO disabling a missile in 1964.^[22] Retired Air Force Captain Robert Salas recalled an incident in 1967 where a missile system malfunction allegedly coincided with a UFO report.^[23][22]

Crew

The Age of Disclosure is the directorial debut of Dan Farah, who previously produced the science fiction film Ready Player One and the fantasy series The Shannara Chronicles.^[24][5] Spencer Averick was the film’s editor.^[25] Blair Mowat scored The Age of Disclosure.^[1]

Release

The film was showcased at SXSW on March 9, 2025.^[26] It released on November 21, 2025, on Amazon Prime^[27] and had a limited, Oscar-qualifying release at theaters in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.^[28]

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 30% of 10 critics’ reviews are positive.^[29]
The audience “popcorn meter” rating is 93%, based on more than 500 user ratings.^[30]
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 45 out of 100, based on five critics, indicating “mixed or average” reviews.^[7]

Christian Zilko of IndieWire stated:

“As someone who has never been persuaded by anything I had ever heard about aliens before watching the film, I feel qualified to tell you that The Age of Disclosure is really, really convincing…The amount of military officials who share detailed, corroborating stories of alien encounters, and congresspeople who vouch for the credibility of their claims, make this feel like a documentary with front-page news potential…Of course, there’s still the problem of never being able to see this classified evidence, and each viewer will have to decide how many generals swearing that they’ve seen aliens with their own eyes is enough to convince them.”^[2]

Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote:

“The title of the film refers to the idea — or is it merely the hope? — that we now live in an age when the government is being pressured to shed its secrecy. The people want to know, and the film says: We will know. But if that’s the case, then when are we actually going to be shown something that looks like more than a dupe of a dupe of an old video game depicting a blurry black dot of an alien spaceship cruising over water at what looks to be about 300 miles per hour [500 km/h]? I’ll believe it when I see it.”^[25]

Writing in The Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Fienberg called the film a “sensationalistic wolf in understated sheep’s clothing” and opined that “almost nothing in The Age of Disclosure is ‘new,’ per se” but that the quality of its production values set it apart from similar films of the genre and that “some viewers will happily celebrate the fantasy, when it looks this legitimate”. Fienberg dismissed it as “a basic cable exploitation doc done up with a fancy gloss”, in which “nothing is proven, and thus nothing can be refuted”.^[1]

On Collider, Nate Richard wrote that “as we get further into the movie, the more ridiculous it gets”, that it was “executed in the most bland way possible”, and that “the pacing makes the movie feel like you’re watching a college PowerPoint presentation”. Richard’s conclusion was that: “…the movie felt like it was made to be an echo chamber for those who already believe in UFOs. If the job of The Age of Disclosure was to convert skeptics, it failed.”^[31]

According to The Guardian reviewer Adrian Horton, the film is “the most serious and sourced documentary on the government’s handling of UAP information to date”, although he also noted the lack of evidence provided to support the claims.^[6]

Writing for The New York Times, Ben Kenigsberg concluded of the film that “anyone who sits through its nearly two hours of unprovable claims is a chump”.^[32]

Responses

Participants

In a December 2, 2025 episode of Hannity, host Sean Hannity opened his interview with United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio with what he said was a “fun question”, asking him about The Age of Disclosure. Rubio, who appeared in the film, laughed and clarified that his interview in the film was from while he was still a Senator from Florida. Rubio said the point he was “trying to drive at” during his interview for the film was his concern that “some adversary, another country for example, has developed some asymmetric capability for surveillance or the like for which we are not prepared” citing the examples of drones or hot air balloons. Addressing the film’s other interview subjects, from 2:15 to 2:40, Rubio said,^[33]

It has, as I said, claims from people that were former admirals, naval fighters, people with high clearances in government. Some of them are pretty spectacular claims. I’m not calling these people liars; I don’t have independent knowledge that what they’re saying is true. The one observation I had is we had people that did very important jobs in the U.S. government who are saying these things, so we have people with very high jobs in the U.S. government that are either, A: liars, B: crazy, or C: telling the truth. And two of those three options are not good. I don’t have the answers. I don’t want to call them liars. I just don’t have any independent way to verify the things they’ve said.

Scientists

Joshua Semeter, a Boston University professor of electrical engineering who was a member of the NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Independent Study Team was skeptical of the film’s allegations, “I have seen no evidence that the government has been hiding anything…. [U]ltimately, testimonies are simply not enough. They need to be backed up with evidence.”^[8]

Skeptics

Jason Colavito, a researcher who has documented the connection between pseudoarchaeology and UFO beliefs, wrote that the film was like “an episode of Ancient Aliens with better production values” and opined that by “the time the film is over, the viewer has seen no evidence that is new, no stories that had not been told many times before”.^{[34][failed verification]}

Writing in Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer criticized the film’s reliance on anecdotes. According to Shermer, “What scientists and skeptics are asking of the UFO and UAP community is to, at long last, show us the evidence”. Shermer compared the anecdotes featured in the film to claims about Bigfoot, saying, “If all you had were stories about what you saw, and maybe a couple of out-of-focus videos and grainy photographs, no one would believe you…and for good reason!”.^[9]

See also

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States government.

External links