Citizenfour (Laura Poitras, 2014) USA

Reviewed by Logan Kovarick. Seen at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015.

I attended the Outstanding Directors Tribute at the film festival this year and amongst the phenomenal directors, one stood out to me. Director Laura Poitras talked about her film and what she went through to make it. Being stopped at international borders, being on Homeland Security’s watch list, and being 0ne of the two journalists to release documents for Edward Snowden. I was utterly curious about this Oscar nominated documentary and I was not at all let down. Citizenfour is about a documentarian and a journalist who travel to Hong Kong to meet with an unknown man that claims to have classified documents about the NSA intercepting massive amounts of data from US citizens. The so called Citizenfour is later revealed to be Edward Snowden, the infamous whistleblower who in the end released documents to the public consisting of classified information about certain programs that involved spying on innocent US and German citizens.

When you look back and read about when these documents first started coming out, you read about two journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. The first two people to meet with Snowden and release these documents through their given mediums. It made national news immediately and put a target on both of their backs, including bringing up the question of who is their source releasing these documents. A news headline that stayed in the spotlight for quite some time. Some americans were outraged, some were shocked, some didn’t know what to think. None the less, its in American’s history book, and what this documentary does is something that also deserves to go in the history books. Poitras captures history with her camera like none other. The audience is plopped in Edward Snowdens life for a short amount of time and gets to witness his fear, his triumph, his jokes, and his release of the documents. Its really a magical experience to be apart of history with such close proximity and such gripping film making.

What I loved so much about this documentary was Poitras cinema verite style of film making. The entire film, the audience is a fly on the wall and its extremely gripping and suspenseful to watch these people interact. Citizenfour seamlessly drops the audience in The Mira hotel in Hong Kong, where Edward Snowden is having his first meeting with Poitras and Greenwald. You get to watch how these events unfolded and what these people are thinking while they’re changing the world at their fingertips, and all in a confined hotel room. This feeling that she captured is so rare in documentaries which is what makes this one head and shoulders above a lot of documentaries I’ve seen in the past. Citizenfour is in the hunt for best documentary in the upcoming Oscars and I predict it will win it by a mile. Citizenfour was one of the best theater experiences I had as well. Since there isn’t a lot of music, you can feel the tension and the curiosity in the air. Watching it with an audience was electrifying and added to the experience. Ive watched in on the small screen and while its not as powerful as in the theater, it still is exceptional.