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Citizenfour, an inside look at Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower.
The disclosures that Edward Snowden revealed dont only expose a threat to our privacy but to our
democracy itself, Poitras said in her acceptance speech. Thank you to Edward Snowden for his
courage and for the many other whistleblowers. Snowden, in a statement released after the award was
announced, said, My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be
inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world.
The film, which has been hailed as a real-life thriller, chronicles Snowdens effort to securely contact
Poitras and Glenn Greenwald in 2013 and meet them in Hong Kong, where Poitras filmed Snowden
discussing the thousands of classified NSA documents he was leaking to them, and his motives for
doing so. The film takes its title from the pseudonym Snowden used when he contacted Poitras in
encrypted emails that were revealed in her documentary.
If you publish the source material, one of his first emails said, I will likely be immediately
implicated. This must not deter you from releasing the information I will provide. Thank you, and be
careful.
Citizenfour received widespread acclaim when it was released last year. The New York Times said it
was a primal political fable for the digital age, while Indiewire described it as the stuff of Orwellian
nightmares it plays like the greatest paranoid thriller since All the Presidents Men. Prior to the
Academy Awards, it won a number of prizes for best documentary from the New York Film Critics
Poitras, who studied film at the San Francisco Art Institute and political theory at The New School
before turning to journalism, will have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 2016.
This story was updated with comments from Poitras and Snowden.
Photo: John Shearer/Invision/AP
Email the author: peter.maass@theintercept.com