Watching the whistleblower: Behind Edward Snowden doco Citizenfour

Adam Berry

Filmmaker Laura Poitras accepts the Carl von Ossietzky journalism prize on December 14, 2014 in Berlin.

Edward Snowden's decision to release explosive revelations and his own identity were captured by American film-maker Laura Poitras for new feature documentary Citizenfour. She talks to Steve Dollar.

Nothing in her career as a documentary film-maker could quite prepare Laura Poitras for an encounter in a luxury hotel room in Hong Kong in June 2013. It was there, amid absolute secrecy and after months of encrypted communications, that she met Edward Snowden. The once-anonymous contractor for the National Security Agency was about to become the world's most famous whistleblower, leaking classified documents that exposed the unprecedented global and domestic reach of the agency's surveillance programmes.

"Being in the hotel room, I had an experience I had never had before," says the director of feature documentary Citizenfour. "There were things I filmed that I couldn't remember that I filmed, and I saw them later in the footage. I just blocked them."

Although she remains behind the camera, Poitras was joined in the sessions by journalists Glenn Greenwald - to whom Snowden had likewise reached out and the film-maker had persuaded to participate - and Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian. They would become the conduits for the release of Snowden's explosive revelations. "There's a conversation when Glenn talks to Snowden about coming forward, and the camera goes back and forth, and I actually didn't remember I filmed that, and for me it's the most powerful scene in the film," says Poitras, 52.

In the scene, Snowden insists he will go public as the source of the NSA leaks that the journalists will release regardless of the consequences. It's a palpably electric sequence, which would be the core of any fictional drama. In this case, though, the action is perilously real, and the camera isn't only capturing a historical event, it's part of the making of it.

"The choice that he's making could end his life," Poitras says. "I've worked in war zones with bombs going off, and I know, 'OK, that's the moment'. I know that's the one where all the emotion is contained. In this case, my brain, whatever those defences were, just blocked it out. I felt we were in a state of free fall, not knowing what kind of landing we'd encounter."

When Citizenfour, which takes its title from a codename used by Snowden to identify himself to Poitras, begins screening today it will introduce audiences to a mild-mannered and quick-witted computer expert who is variously considered a traitor or a hero but whose image has been inevitably distorted by much of the news media.

"I think there's enough evidence on the table [that] you can make your own decision," says Poitras, whose measured approach frames in intimate and vulnerable terms what might have been sensationalised. "We wanted not to be influenced or feed into the frenzy around us, but stay true to material and the human drama. It's really about Snowden and what he chose to do."

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Watching the whistleblower: Behind Edward Snowden doco Citizenfour