Citizen Four

  • Screening Dates: 7th April, 8pm  //  14th April, 6pm
  • Starring: Edward Snowden
  • Directed by: Laura Poitras
  • Running time: 113 mins
  • Rating: M
  • Language: English
Synopsis:

DOCUMENTARY: Citizenfour, intimately documents whistleblower Edward Snowden’s efforts to lift the lid on the intrusive post-9/11 US eavesdropping industry. Positively camera-shy, director Laura Poitras captures him in a Hong Kong hotel room in 2013, over eight tense days during which his revelations are first made public.

The trailer for Citizenfour, which warns that “every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial… is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not”, plays it as the most chilling thriller of the year, and that’s no an idle boast; there is tension here to rival any of executive producer Steven Soderbergh’s taut dramas. As with so much of her previous work, Poitras’s documentary dramatically straddles the divide between art and journalism, cinema and reportage.

Citizenfour won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary at the 2015 Oscars.