9/10

Edward Snowden’s eye opening reveals about the invasion of privacies that our very government takes is front and center in this documentary that is presented as more of a real life movie unfolding before our very eyes. In January 2013, Director Laura Poitras was most of the way into making a film about surveillance in the post-9/11 era when she started receiving encrypted e-mails from someone identifying himself as “citizen four,” who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programs run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies. In June 2013, she and investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is one hundred percent breaking news in the history of cinema. As someone who read plenty about the Snowden saga of last year, i found enough in “CitizenFour” to feel like i never heard anything about the story. Poitras has an agenda for the truth, and it’s spellbounding the events she was lucky enough to capture when the camera was running. What was originally refreshing for this documentary as opposed to others, is that Poitras doesn’t need side by side interviews to narrate the story. She lets the lens do the talking, and the reveals are incredible even for someone who knows how dirty this regime can be. I don’t think there is a film this year or this decade that will open your eyes more about the freedoms we are losing. Events like 9/11 made it possible for these higher ups to succeed in getting these laws passed to invade the privacies of e-mail, cell phones, and any form of electronic communication. I won’t ruin the film for those of you interested in checking it out, but i left the theater feeling a little tense, and it’s in that respect that the film is scarier than anything a horror film could ever bring you. Whether you consider Snowden a traitor or hero or something in between, it’s not relevant. The movie is impactful in its immediacy of action needed, and terrifying in its implications. It took a ton of bravery for Snowden to come forward with this information, and the films ending foreshadows that this might only be the beginning. The impact of a movie like “CitizenFour” i believe will last for decades. It’s a film that will never allow you to going back to living with your eyes closed. I commend Poitras and Greenwald for continuing forward in their search for the truth when the walls around them are coming down. The camera work is sharp, the sound is perfect, and the editing deserves a noteworthy praise of it’s own. The e-mails exchanged between Poitras and Snowden are shown during the film and are narrated by Laura herself. The text is shown while different spy agency locations are shown in the background. This gives the audience a feel for how big empowering this problem really is. It would be easy enough to tell us about these places, but Poitras does her homework and shows us that this is one nightmare that extends beyond someone’s dreams. “CitizenFour” is every bit alarming as it is informative. It’s the tip of the iceburg in a discussion about what else might be going on behind closed doors.