The film "Citizen Four" about Snowden took an Oscar

Yesterday, at the 87th Academy Awards, the best documentary film of the year was the Citizenfour film (Citizen Four) about Edward Snowden.

The picture's director Laura Poitras (Laura Poitras) in January 2013 began to receive anonymous encrypted emails from a person under the nickname Citizenfour, who claimed that he had evidence of the existence of illegal covert surveillance programs that leads the NSA in cooperation with other special services around the world. The journalist was skeptical of these letters, but then Citizenfour taught her to use encryption programs, and she received the first documents confirming his words.
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Five months later, she and journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen McAskill flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with this man. He was Edward Snowden.

“Oscar” for Laura Poitras is a recognition not only of professionalism as a cinematographer, but also of civic courage. We need a certain courage to covertly with the secret services to work with the most wanted informant, whom the NSA openly calls a criminal and a traitor.

The award of the Oscar for this film, according to the NY Times , is also “a way for members of the American Film Academy to make something like a political statement without risking their reputation.”

“The Citizenfour film tells about a long-term battle against a continuous interception of communications and gives it in the form of an exciting story about one person. The work of Poitras, Snowden, and journalist Glenn Greenwald helped define a new political course for countries around the world. It is worthy of at least Oscar, ”the statement of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said.

After receiving such a prestigious award, the documentary film “Citizen Four” will surely see even more people. They all learn about the sacrifice that Snowden made, and about the violations of the special services in the field of surveillance of the population.



PS By the way, at the end of 2015, the premiere of the artistic painting “Snowden” , which Oliver Stone is shooting, is planned.