In ‘Citizenfour,’ Laura Poitras feels heat of telling Snowden’s story

The word "risky" is thrown around often in the film world, usually when personalities embark on a new direction or a commercially challenging project.

But Oscar-nominated director Laura Poitras faced a different type of hazard with her latest film, "Citizenfour": the possibility of arrest, attack and harassment.

The filmmaker, after all, was making a documentary about one of the most-wanted fugitives: secret-spilling National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

"I'd worked in conflict zones, and there's a kind of fear there," Poitras, who has made movies in places such as Iraq and Yemen, said in an interview Saturday. "But this is a different kind of fear. The intelligence world operates in the shadows. You don't know where the dangers lie."

Poitras was a key person Snowden reached out to when he decided to go public with documents detailing massive U.S. and British surveillance operations. She was one of three journalists who traveled to Hong Kong to hole up in a hotel room over eight days in June 2013 as Snowden revealed much of what he knew as a high-level NSA consultant. She also shot the 12-minute video of Snowden that went viral at the time and in turn made him, at 29, perhaps the most important and polarizing figure of his kind since Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.

"Citizenfour," which had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival over the weekend to a standing ovation and will hit theaters Oct. 24, is Poitras' original video writ large. The movie is a look at how Snowden decided to pull back the curtain on the government surveillance operations and what happened to him when he did, often through never-before-seen footage. The film could reignite the debate over how Snowden should be viewed and shine a light anew on the surveillance apparatus.

Whether Snowden is a whistle-blower or a traitor is a question that has captivated security and foreign-policy thinkers since his leaks reached the public. With "Citizenfour," Poitras has made a movie that argues for his heroism, emphasizing the risks he took to step forward.

She also lays out in often startling detail the extensive surveillance operations of the U.S. and British governments including facilities that are believed to process data (possibly emails, phone calls or other information) of millions of citizens also layering in voices such as those of former NSA official-turned-critic William Binney and activist Jacob Appelbaum. Clips from the strange bedfellows of President Obama and former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer decrying Snowden are meant primarily to show an establishment's panic and defensiveness about Snowden's actions.

Telling at once a story both broad and personal, the film begins with Poitras' voice-over describing how she had been contacted anonymously by a man identifying himself as "Citizenfour," who claimed to have proof of illegal government surveillance.

The source turns out to be Snowden, but before Poitras gets to him, she details the extensive national security apparatus that he will soon expose. The director has activists explain how the government uses so-called metadata to track phone calls and movements of ordinary citizens, and she shows clips of James Clapper, director of national intelligence for the NSA, testifying before Congress that the government does not spy on millions of Americans.

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In 'Citizenfour,' Laura Poitras feels heat of telling Snowden's story