Citizenfour

Citizenfour (2014) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM — director Laura Poitras filmed it in real time inside a Hong Kong hotel room over eight days, with Edward Snowden sitting across the table. The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2015.

In January 2013, Poitras began receiving encrypted emails from a source signing himself CITIZENFOUR. He claimed the NSA was running mass surveillance programs on civilians worldwide and had proof. Five months later she landed in Hong Kong with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill. Snowden explains on camera exactly what he took, why he took it, and what he expects to happen next. No reconstruction. No narration over archive footage. Just a man talking in a hotel room while the story breaks around him.

What Poitras captured is rare in documentary filmmaking: not the aftermath of a decision but the decision itself, happening in front of the lens. Snowden knew what he was giving up. He went ahead anyway. Stream Citizenfour (2014) online on iFILM.