Citizenfour (2014)

A documentarian and a reporter travel to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with Edward Snowden.

Director:

Laura Poitras

Stars:

Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, William Binney

Won 1 Oscar. Another 43 wins & 35 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Edward Snowden	...	Himself
Glenn Greenwald	...	Himself
William Binney	...	Himself
Jacob Appelbaum	...	Himself
Ewen MacAskill	...	Himself
Jeremy Scahill	...	Himself
M. Margaret McKeown	...	Herself - Judge
Kevin Bankston	...	Himself, attorney representing Carolyn Jewel
Harry Pregerson	...	Himself - Judge
H. Thomas Byron	...	Himself - Government Representative
Michael Daly Hawkins	...	Himself - Judge
Jonathan Man	...	Himself - Human Rights Lawyer
Robert Tibbo	...	Himself - Human Rights Lawyer (voice)
José Casado	...	Himself
Roberto Kaz	...	Himself (as Robert Kaz)

Storyline

In January 2013, Laura Poitras started receiving anonymous encrypted e-mails from "CITIZENFOUR," who claimed to have evidence of illegal covert surveillance programs run by the NSA in collaboration with other intelligence agencies worldwide. Five months later, she and reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The resulting film is history unfolding before our eyes.

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Plot Keywords:

mass surveillance | government surveillance | number in title | nsa | reference to the internet | 

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Taglines:

Witness the event that changed history: The Edward Snowden revelations.

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Genres:

Documentary | Biography

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

USA Germany UK

Language:

English Portuguese German

Release Date:

28 November 2014 (USA)

Also Known As:

Cidadãoquatro

Filming Locations:

Room 1014, Mira Hotel, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$193,957, 31 October 2014, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$2,800,870

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$3,780,692

Company Credits

Production Co:

Praxis Films,Participant Media,HBO Documentary Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

114 min

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Director Laura Poitras edited the film in Germany after flying directly there from Hong Kong with the Snowden footage, to prevent the FBI from showing up with a search warrant for her hard drives.

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Goofs

In the second CNN item (friday, 53'), the Hebrew characters on the mobile phone in the background aren't censored in the first two shots. Afterwards the background has changed to only leave Latin characters on the dial pad.

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Quotes

TITLE CARD]: After 40 days in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, Snowden receives political asylum in Russia for one year.

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Connections

References Citizen Kane (1941)

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Soundtracks

Come & Get It
Performed by Selena Gomez
Written by Ester Dean, Mikkel Storleer Eriksen and Tor Erik Hermansen

User Reviews

Solid, Powerful

I thought Citizenfour was quite powerful as a humanizing portrayal of Snowden. I didn't learn anything new particularly about NSA programs, since I've been reading each story I come across, but the film quite effectively transported me into Snowden's hotel room in Hong Kong and into conversations with Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill. Snowden comes off as a completely responsible, quite sincere, thoughtful young man. He very clearly and explicitly says that he does not want to be the story, and one believes him. Whereas Assange can impress people as narcissistic and Bradley/Chelsea Manning's sexual confusion was only one of a number of facets which distracted from Cablegate, Snowden sounds like a young Ellsberg – very intelligent and well-spoken.

Poitras's style was interesting, I thought. The camera a number of times holds for lengthy periods on fairly static shots of architecture, which served to impress the viewer with the monolithic, pervasive nature of the NSA's networks. There's a long disorienting shot out the window of a train at night or going through a tunnel, which draws you into the dark network Snowden's revealing.

The film successfully touches on a number of different aspects of the surveillance state, bringing in the idea that when we talk about "privacy" we're talking about security, about our constitutional right to freedom from unlawful search and seizure. I think this is a hard sell for too many viewers. I don't fault the film here. I saw it with a friend who was a few minutes late because she was watching the Giants' game. In discussing the movie afterward she questioned just how important some of the issues raised were. Greenwald and others speak passionately about the dangers of the surveillance state, but my date pointed out that she can't feel much fear that the NSA is going to be breaking down her door because of anything she's said on the phone or in e-mail. My own experience is that friends and colleagues on the one hand self-censor and don't mention politics, drugs, Bittorrent use, etc. in e-mail or social media for fear of the all-knowing eye, or on the other hand seem oblivious to any danger – why worry about Google programmatically reading every single e-mail sent or received, if it means free e-mail and potentially more accurate search results when shopping? Snowden at one point convincingly says he doesn't think it is possible for anyone no matter how brilliant and educated to individually fight all the electronic surveillance systems in existence. We're told of the multitude of methods of surveillance and repeatedly shown NSA officials blatantly lying to Congress about their existence. The lack of accountability for this last has been personally troubling to me – I remember Watergate and Iran-Contra – how is it that the heads of the NSA can with impunity flat out lie to Congress about spying on American citizens? What will viewers come away with when walking out of the theater after Citizenfour? I'm wondering how many will see it as a call to action, and how many as a well-executed depiction of Edward Snowden's experience, which may not be seen as intersecting our own.