Last night, Laura Potras’s outstanding film Citizenfour took home the coveted prize for Best Documentary Feature. Undoubtedly one of the most exhilarating experiences one can have whilst watching a film, Poitras takes you inside the hotel room as she, journalist Glen Greenwald, and Edward Snowden carefully map out how they want to disseminate Snowden’s information on the NSA. It’s an acute examination in how journalism, how people, must narritivize everything.
In his review for the film, Luke Goodsell wrote, “What resonates most is the thrill of immediacy the film cultivates. By cleverly combining fly-on-the-wall footage with interviews, WarGames-style text-messaging banter, and the perpetually chattering screens of the 24-hour news cycle, Citizenfour uses its enemies’ tactics to distill the noise of mass media to its essence: information.” From the very first frame, it’s about data upon data, upon data, and what to do with that data.
Citizenfour, though, is the third in director Laura Poitras’s informal trilogy, examining fear, paranoia, and information in a post-9/11 world. The two preceding works, My Country, My Country and The Oath are now available to stream from Fandor, both just as harrowing pieces of filmmaking Citizenfour, which makes its debut on HBO tonight at 9pm EST.
Be sure to check out My Country, My Country and The Oath on Fandor using your Movie Mezzanine coupon here.
