‘The Age of Disclosure’ documentary presents evidence of aliens and UFOs with broad bipartisan support. Will people believe it?

AUSTIN, Texas — The documentary The Age of Disclosure sets out to do what countless films have done before: present proof that humans on Earth are not alone in the universe. What’s different this time is that 34 senior members of the government, military and intelligence community went on camera to talk about it.

“This is the biggest story there is,” director Dan Farah told Yahoo Entertainment. “What’s a bigger story than an 80-year-old cover-up of the existence of nonhuman intelligent life and revealing there’s a secret Cold War race among nations to reverse-engineer technology of nonhuman origin?”

There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s back up.

The movie, which premiered on March 9 at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film & TV Festival, reveals information alleging that the U.S. government has been working to hide evidence of the existence of extraterrestrials and that it’s competing with other countries to reverse-engineer the complex technology they’ve uncovered.

It’s a stigmatized topic often associated with conspiracy theorists, but Congress has held multiple hearings over the last few years about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) — a less loaded term, perhaps, for UFOs. The documentary states that UAPs could be foreign invaders, robust U.S. counterintelligence that is out of congressional oversight, extraterrestrials or a combination of the three.

And they’re not just weird-looking objects in the sky either. Intelligence officials in the documentary say there’s irrefutable, documented evidence of vehicles that appear to defy the laws of physics and interfere with nuclear and military activity. Much of that evidence is still classified.

According to dissenters mentioned in the film, giving the American people more information about the advanced technology would inform the whole world — including so-called bad actors from other countries. Russia and China were mentioned by name.

There’s also a stigma for political figures, ever concerned about their reputations, who speak out about UAPs. One source claimed that a Pentagon official told them UAPs are “the devil’s work.” It’s difficult for anyone — regardless of status — to get access to classified UAP information.

“Even presidents, it seems, have been operating on a need-to-know basis,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio says in the film. He added that some of the biggest attacks on the U.S., like the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, came from the country’s inability to prepare for the unforeseen. That’s why he’s one of several bipartisan advocates for further transparency and research into UAP findings.

Two key voices in the documentary are Jay Stratton, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official and director of the government’s UAP Task Force, and Luis Elizondo, a former Department of Defense official and member of the government’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

“I have seen with my own eyes nonhuman craft and nonhuman beings,” Stratton says in the film.

Both men mention repeatedly that the government’s “legacy program,” which includes members of the CIA and the Air Force as well as defense contractors, obscures information in a way that’s creating a national security threat. It’s been around since the 1940s.

Elizondo says in the documentary that he felt driven by a sense of duty to widely share information that “could change the trajectory of our species.” He believes extraterrestrials may be trying to study our military and nuclear capabilities.

So, what’s the evidence? Much of that is still classified — but not everything.

Military officials including Alex Dietrich, James Cobb and Ryan Graves all recall encounters they saw with their own eyes.

Scientists Puthoff and Eric Davis explain in the documentary that UAPs frequently move inside clear spheres. They believe space and time function differently inside those bubbles, which allow the beings inside to survive moving at extreme speeds (more than 30,000 miles per hour) across media like air and water while defying gravity and producing biological effects on the people who come close to them.

The technology that would be required to make that possible is far beyond what the U.S. has harnessed, leading some to believe that the lifeforms responsible for it could have destroyed humans already if they wanted to. It also may present a clean, combustion-free energy source that would be massively beneficial to the climate.

With bipartisan support, New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds introduced the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act in July 2023 to increase transparency around UAPs and further open scientific research. Whistleblowers provided firsthand testimony to Congress, alleging that there are secret programs to retrieve and seek to reverse engineer advanced craft of unknown or nonhuman origin. It became a law, but was first stripped of an eminent domain mandate that would have given the government the power to take control of UAP-related material controlled by private persons or entities — like federal contractors.

Scientist Hal Puthoff explains in the documentary that putting contractors in charge of certain projects gives them protection from Freedom of Information Act requests that apply to the government. Rubio explains that over time, the government has lost oversight and visibility into what private contractors have been doing with technology given to them by the government. That puts an extraordinary amount of power and control in the hands of private corporations that have their own interests.

The documentary never likens UAPs, extraterrestrial discoveries or government cover-ups to anything in pop culture — no E.T., no Close Encounters and definitely no Men in Black. That might have made it easier for people to comprehend, but Farah told Yahoo Entertainment that “the goal was to make the most credible, serious, non-sensational documentary ever made on the topic.”

“I didn’t want to do anything that even came close to sensationalism,” he said.

What was most eye-opening for him wasn’t the sheer number of people willing to speak out about this or call for change — it was the bipartisan support for it.

“It became very clear that leadership in both the Democratic and Republican parties think this is an extremely important topic, and that’s why Secretary of State Rubio from the Republican Party and Senator [Kirsten] Gillibrand from the Democratic Party made it a priority to participate,” Farah said. “The interview subjects in my documentary make it clear there are things happening regarding this topic that we should be concerned about and we should be taking seriously.”

The documentary does not include any voices that disagree with what UAP findings might be or explain them away. Farah said that “there’s not really another side.”

"These people are … extremely credible people who are sharing their personal knowledge and experience,” he said. “My hope would be that it helps create some conversations around this topic that haven’t been happening that will help get rid of the unjust stigma around this topic to make sure our country is taking it seriously.”

He believes that if people call on the government to release more information about UAPs, that may lead to what the documentary calls “the greatest paradigm shift in human history — the Age of Disclosure.”

The Age of Disclosure had its world premiere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, on March 9.