Citizenfour – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Citizenfour is a 2014 documentary film directed by Laura Poitras concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal. Shot in the cinma vrit style,[2] the film had its U.S. premiere on October 10, 2014 at the New York Film Festival and its UK premiere on October 17, 2014 at the BFI London Film Festival. The film features Glenn Greenwald and was co-produced by Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy, and Dirk Wilutzky, with Steven Soderbergh and others serving as executive producers. Citizenfour won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars.

In January 2013, Laura Poitras received an encrypted e-mail from a stranger who called himself Citizen Four.[3] In it, he offered her inside information about illegal wiretapping practices of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies. Poitras had already been working for several years on a film about monitoring programs in the US that were the result of the September 11 attacks. In June 2013, accompanied by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill,[4] she went to Hong Kong with her camera for the first meeting with the stranger, who identified himself as Edward Snowden. Several other meetings followed. The recordings gained from the meetings form the basis of the film.

By 2012, Laura Poitras had begun work on the third film in her 9/11 trilogy which she intended to focus broadly on the topic of domestic surveillance for which she interviewed Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, William Binney and Jacob Appelbaum.[5] She was first contacted by Edward Snowden in January 2013 after he was unable to establish encrypted communications with Greenwald.[6][7] She flew to Hong Kong in late May 2013, where over the course of eight days she filmed Snowden in his hotel room[5] at the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong. Later, she traveled to Moscow where she filmed a second interview with Snowden conducted by Greenwald.

Production company Praxis Films was involved in the production of the documentary. The film was distributed by RADIUS TWC in the US,[8]Britdoc Foundation and Artificial Eye in the UK[9] and Piffl Media in Germany. The broadcast rights for television were obtained by Channel 4 (United Kingdom), HBO Documentary Films (USA) and Norddeutscher Rundfunk (Germany).

The international film premiere took place on October 10, 2014 in the United States at the New York Film Festival. In Europe, the documentary was shown for the first time on October 17 at the London Film Festival. The first showing in Germany was on October 27 as part of the Leipzig Film Festival. The director Laura Poitras was present in Hamburg Abaton cinema for a preview on November 45 at the official Germany Premiere at Kino International. In German cinemas, the film has been running since November 6. Its widest release as of January 22, 2015 was 105 theaters, in the weekend of December 1218, 2014.[10]

It premiered on Home Box Office on February 23, 2015, the day after the 2015 Oscars[11] and was subsequently released for streaming on HBO Go.[12]Channel 4 broadcast it in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2015[13] and has released it for view-on-demand through March 4, 2015.[14]

Citizenfour received widespread critical acclaim. It has a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 124 critics, with an average score of 8.3/10. Metacritic gave the film an 88 out of 100 based on a normalized rating of 38 reviews.[15]

Ronnie Scheib of Variety wrote "No amount of familiarity with whistleblower Edward Snowden and his shocking revelations of the U.S. government's wholesale spying on its own citizens can prepare one for the impact of Laura Poitras's extraordinary documentary Citizenfour... far from reconstructing or analyzing a fait accompli, the film tersely records the deed in real time, as Poitras and fellow journalist Glenn Greenwald meet Snowden over an eight-day period in a Hong Kong hotel room to plot how and when they will unleash the bombshell that shook the world. Adapting the cold language of data encryption to recount a dramatic saga of abuse of power and justified paranoia, Poitras brilliantly demonstrates that information is a weapon that cuts both ways."[16]

Spencer Ackerman writes in The Guardian: "Citizenfour must have been a maddening documentary to film. Its subject is pervasive global surveillance, an enveloping digital act that spreads without visibility, so its scenes unfold in courtrooms, hearing chambers and hotels. Yet the virtuosity of Laura Poitras, its director and architect, makes its 114 minutes crackle with the nervous energy of revelation."[17]

Time magazine rated the film #8 out of its top 10 movies of 2014[18] and called the film "This Halloween's Scariest Chiller".[19]Vanity Fair rated it #4 out of its top 10[20] and Grantland rated it #3 of its top 10.[21] Writing for the Chicago Tribune, former Defense Department intelligence analyst Alex Lyda penned a negative review, calling Snowden "more narcissist than patriot".[22]David Edelstein reviewed the film mostly favorably, and jocularly advised viewers "don't buy your ticket online or with a credit card".[23]

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Citizenfour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia