Secrets become history: Edward Snowden on film as Citizenfour

Radius

Citizenfour is filmmaker Laura Poitras' account of the first meetingsbetween herself, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden. It was first shown publiclylast Friday, and it will open intheaters in New York,Los Angeles, and San Francisco on October 24.

For those who have followed the news around the Snowden documents,even in small doses, Citizenfourisn't full of revelations (though there are a few surprises). But for viewersinterested in surveillance, or the future of the Internet, or journalismit won't matter. The film is riveting, and its power is in its source material.

Poitras filmed Snowden for 20 hours over eight days in his Hong Kong hotel, and her film has now given the world an unfiltered portrait of the man who, in the course of the year, became the Wests most wanted dissident.

The movie follows Snowden in Hong Kong up until his decision to leave the hotel and flee for Russia, where he remains today. The hotel scenes are sometimes tense and at times surprisingly funny. Snowden and the reporters get granular, talking about how theyll break the story and what might happen afterward.For a journalism junkie, Poitras fly-on-the-wall picture of a meeting with thesource of the century is practically pornographic (in the best possible way).

Citizenfourisnt perfect. Thescenes with Snowden are pure gold, and theportrayal of how the wider debate unfolds into a 24-hour news cycle is also sharp. Other parts, like when Poitras activist friend Jacob Appelbaum is lecturing Occupy Wall Street protestors about maintaining digital anonymity, fall flat and would have been best left aside.

No matter, Poitras hasnt made a slick documentary.Citizenfour is at onceanirreplaceable piece of history and a sharpriposte to everypolitician or pundit still screaming for Snowden's head. It's a movie that will be talked about 20 years from nowbeyond compelling.

In its first scenes, Citizenfour shows the viewer typed messages between Poitras and Snowden, which Poitras voices over. At the time, Snowden tried to contact Greenwald as well, but they couldnt establisha secure channel.

"What you know as stellarwind has grown," Snowden wrote to Poitras in early 2013, then calling himself by the "citizen four" moniker. "We are building the greatest weapon for oppression in the history of man." (The full e-mail exchangeswere published a few days ago at Wired.)

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Secrets become history: Edward Snowden on film as Citizenfour