The Age of Disclosure

The Age of Disclosure

Type	Book, film or media
Also known as	Age of Disclosure

The Age of Disclosure is a 2025 American documentary film about UFOs, directed and produced by Dan Farah. In it, former U.S. government, military and intelligence officials, along with figures from the disclosure movement, claim that a non-human intelligence is present on Earth and that the U.S. government has hidden this for decades, recovering its technology since 1947 or earlier. It premiered at South by Southwest in March 2025 and was released on Amazon Prime Video and in a few cinemas in November 2025. Its producers said it quickly became the platform's highest-grossing documentary. Critics and scientists were mostly unconvinced, pointing to the lack of physical evidence and its reliance on eyewitness testimony.^[1]

Content

Luis Elizondo, a former Defense Department employee, narrates the film and says he was assigned to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) in 2009. With Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer, consultant to the program and parapsychologist, and his collaborator Eric Davis, Elizondo alleges that a secret government "legacy program" has investigated and hidden evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence for more than 80 years. Farah told Variety that the "disclosure" of the title means a hoped-for future moment when governments reveal what they have withheld about aliens and UFOs, a pillar of some UFO conspiracy theories.^[1] The Hollywood Reporter's review counted 34 "talking heads" from government, the military and intelligence, and said the alleged cover-up reached back to the 1947 Roswell incident.^[1]

The interviewees named in the Wikipedia account fall into several groups:^[1][2][3]

• Politicians. Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor; Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Mike Rounds; and Representatives Tim Burchett, André Carson, Dan Crenshaw, Mike Gallagher and Anna Paulina Luna. Burchett's and Luna's Wikipedia biographies both note that they appear, with Luna claiming that U.S. programs existed to recover crashed alien technology.
• Former intelligence and defense officials. James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence; Christopher C. Miller, former acting Secretary of Defense; Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; and retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, former commander of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command.
• Jay Stratton. The former director of the UAP Task Force, who had also appeared on the reality series The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, claims governments are racing to reverse-engineer alien technology and likens it to the Manhattan Project.
• Pilots. Navy pilots David Fravor, Alex Dietrich and Ryan Graves, linked to the Pentagon UFO videos, and former Air Force pilot and NORAD director Col. James D. Cobb. Graves and Brett Feddersen, formerly of the National Security Council and the Federal Aviation Administration, discuss aviation safety.
• Others. Retired Army colonel and Northrop Grumman executive Karl Nell, and Task Force members Travis S. Taylor and Mike Gold, describe experiences from the 2010s. Garry Nolan and retired Navy intelligence officer Mike Flaherty discuss claimed biological effects. Former Air Force lieutenant Robert Jacobs describes what he believed was a UFO disabling a missile in 1964 (see Big Sur UFO film). Retired Air Force captain Robert Salas recalls a 1967 missile malfunction said to coincide with a UFO report (see Malmstrom missile incidents).

A citation in the Wikipedia account quotes India's Open magazine as saying that Davis claims in the film that President George H. W. Bush had told him about American military men confronting aliens at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Compare Holloman landing and hangar claim (1964) and Eric Davis asks George H. W. Bush about Corso.^[1]

Production and crew

The film was Farah's first as director. He had produced the science-fiction film Ready Player One and the fantasy series The Shannara Chronicles. Farah said the film was made in "secrecy" over three years, with little publicity. Its infobox lists Vincent Wrenn as cinematographer, Spencer Averick and Colin Frederick as editors, Blair Mowat as composer, and Farah Films as the production company. It runs 109 minutes.^[1] As cited in the Wikipedia account, Farah told Entertainment Weekly he thought it was "only a matter of time" before a sitting president told the world "We’re not alone in the universe."^[1]

Release

The film premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival on 9 March 2025. It was released on Amazon Prime Video on 21 November 2025, with a limited, Oscar-qualifying run in cinemas in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. A New York Times article by Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, cited in the Wikipedia account, reported that it was shown to a congressional audience.^[1] Deadline Hollywood reported that within 48 hours it had broken Prime Video's record for highest-grossing documentary, beating the Oscar winner Free Solo. The figure came from the producers. Deadline also said it was outperforming studio titles such as Jurassic World Rebirth and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.^[1]

Reception

When the Wikipedia account was read, 27% of 11 critics' reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were positive, against an audience score of 93% from more than 500 ratings. Metacritic gave it 45 out of 100 from five critics, meaning "mixed or average" reviews.^[1]

• Daniel Fienberg (The Hollywood Reporter) called it a "sensationalistic wolf in understated sheep's clothing." He said almost nothing in it was new but its polish set it apart, and that in it "nothing is proven, and thus nothing can be refuted."
• Christian Zilko (IndieWire) took it more seriously but felt Farah let his subjects drift into conspiracy territory.
• Nate Richard (Collider) found it bland, likened its pacing to a college PowerPoint presentation, and concluded that it would not convert skeptics.
• Adrian Horton (The Guardian) called it "serious and sourced" but noted that its claims had drawn gasps and criticism.
• Ben Kenigsberg (The New York Times) was dismissive of its nearly two hours of claims that cannot be proven.

Scientists and skeptics were critical.^[1] Joshua Semeter, a Boston University engineering professor who served on the NASA UAP independent study team, said he had seen no evidence that the government was hiding anything and that testimony must be backed by evidence. Writer Jason Colavito likened it to Ancient Aliens with better production, offering no new evidence or stories. In Skeptic, Michael Shermer criticised its reliance on anecdote and compared it to Bigfoot stories.^[1]

Rubio's response

On Hannity on 2 December 2025, Sean Hannity asked Rubio about the film as a "fun question." Rubio said his worry was that a foreign adversary had built some surveillance capability the U.S. was not ready for, citing drones or balloons. He said people, including Navy pilots, admirals and generals, had come forward to him and his colleagues describing programs that even presidents did not know about. He added that officials making such claims were either lying, crazy or truthful, that two of those options were bad, and that he had no independent way to check what they said.^[1]

Notes on the earlier version of this article

• Box-office record. The earlier version said the producers' record claim "was not independently verified." The sources read here attribute the claim to the producers, via Deadline, but do not say whether anyone checked it.^[1]
• Review scores. The earlier version dated the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic figures to late November 2025. The sources read here give the figures without a date.^[1]

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “The Age of Disclosure”, “Tim Burchett”, “Anna Paulina Luna”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.