Citizenfour

In January 2013, Poitras was several years into making a film about surveillance in the post 9/11 era when she started receiving encrypted e-mails from someone identifying himself as “citizenfour,” who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programmes run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies.

In June 2013, she and journalist Henry Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is absolute genius in the history of cinema: a 100% real-life thriller unfolding minute by minute before our eyes. It is vital, urgent, and breathtaking … It is brilliant because it captures an intimate moment of history that will reverberate through the ages; a moment that would not have been captured had not a connection been made.

Directed by Laura Poitras