Omar Khalfi Yesterday i saw the 2014 documentary film named "Citizenfour". the movie follows the story behind the encounter between Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill that took place in a Hong Kong hotel and over the eight days that followed ,which led to the famous NSA leaks and data collection revelations. This piece of film is actually documented history that we now as a whole human species possess. Nothing like this movie that i have seen before captures most what it's like to live in the modern ages. It shows also what a modern day hero looks like. the shots and frames and score all help get you in the mindset of being fully aware of the technology that surrounds us and the powers that gives us as individuals and what could lead to the demise of all this technological progress if the wrong people have the powers and resources to control, especially if the amount of internet freedom keeps decreasing in the coming years. As it is presented in the film there is nothing scarier than being followed everywhere and every move you do is not only collected and documented but also predicted. and with the 3.2 billion people, or almost half of the world's population having internet access it will be almost impossible to escape being traced at anytime and with a mind-blowing ease,i mean google for yourself "how to trace someone's IP while Facebook chatting" and the fact that the majority of people in the world are oblivious and don't actually care or are curious how their devices work and how are they vulnerable is completely insane.in short this was an eye opening film and i am grateful for Snowden and the film maker Laura Poitras for giving me this rattling and shaking of the reality we live in. this puts so many things in perspective.

virek213 Not since Daniel Ellsberg broke the extreme illegality of America's involvement of the Vietnam War with his release of the Pentagon Papers had any government contractor dared to defy their employers and made public huge government dissembling that affected the lives of every man, woman, and child living inside the boundaries of the United States. Just before the end of 2012, an individual who identified himself in e-mails as "Citizenfour" revealed to documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras all-too-convincing evidence that the U.S. intelligence complex, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and most of the major communications conglomerates, were engaged in mass surveillance against the nation's own people in the years and decades following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As it turned out, "Citizenfour" would be identified as Edward Joseph Snowden. In June 2013, Poitras and noted journalist Glenn Greenwald interviewed Snowden at a high-rise hotel in Hong Kong in which he revealed the first huge batch of what he knew. The end result was Snowden becoming one of the most wanted men in history. What also resulted was the Oscar-winning, and disturbing, 2014 documentary CITIZENFOUR.Poitras had already done two documentaries (2006's MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY; 2010's THE OATH) that touched on post-9/11 America; and CITIZENFOUR expands on those two films to focus on what the deaths of nearly 3,000 people on that dark late summer day in 2001 unleashed in the bowels of the intelligence community inside the United States. Poitras, along with Greenwald and MacAskill (the last two of whom worked at the British newspaper The Guardian) went and interviewed Snowden in Hong Kong; and a lot of that interview involves Snowden's chillingly detailed information about how every branch of the intelligence community, and their contractors, including the one (Booz Allen) that Snowden had worked for, used its expertise to monitor the activities of everyone at practically every second of their public and online lives during the day. The revelations that Snowden allowed Greenwald to make public turned out to be every bit as explosive in the media and to the American public as advertised, and then some. Not surprisingly, the kind of paranoia that developed among the three of them in that tenth floor Hong Kong hotel room was extraordinary. And once the first revelations were made public, Snowden was charged with three crimes, two under the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917, basically putting him in the crosshairs of the entire United States government, which was shamed by his revelations, and making him a target for the ultimate charge of Treason.The revelations that Snowden makes to Poitras, Greenwald, and MacAskill (which director Oliver Stone dramatized in his 2016 film SNOWDEN) in his Hong Kong hotel room, along with the e-mail messages he delivers to Poitras and Greenwald while on the run, reveal a great deal about the things the United States government has been doing, to a great degree because of electronic encryption software that was of Snowden's own design, to track the movements of every American citizen possible. It is likely that Snowden first identified himself to Poitras as "Citizenfour" because of his concerns about how the massive bulk-collection program being carried out violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. This amendment guarantees that the government cannot search and seize a person or his property without proper cause; but the Patriot Act, signed into law just after 9/11 by then-president George W. Bush after being passed by a Congress that read not one single page of it, basically superseded it (with the acquiescence of a fearful American public) in the name of National Security. In essence, both CITIZENFOUR, and, two years later, SNOWDEN seem not only to indict Bush and, later, Obama in this whole scandal, but to a fair extent We The People in the bargain.The years following the 9/11 attacks saw a huge explosion in the number of feature-length documentaries being made, including Michael Moore's infamous FAHRENHEIT 9/11, and more sober ones like Eugene Jarecki's WHY WE FIGHT, and Charles Ferguson's NO END IN SIGHT. CITIZENFOUR, whose Oscar win in 2014 was richly justified, should be considered another essential addition to the number of films which speak the truth against government power and overreach. It is as darkly spooky as any fictional high-tech espionage thriller, like MINORITY REPORT or THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND, and thanks to its being based on contemporary events, every bit as scary.

Jackson Booth-Millard I first heard about this documentary film because it featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, then I recognised the subject it focused on, including the Children of Mitchell Brook Primary School is Neasden acting it out on Big Fat Quiz of the Year, so I was looking forward to finding out more about the real story. Basically documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras had worked for many years on a film about monitoring programs in the U.S. that resulted in the 9/11 attacks, then she received an encrypted email from someone calling themselves "Citizenfour". In it was information about illegal wiretapping practices, classified documents providing evidence of mass incriminate and illegal invasions of privacy by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies. With investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill, Poitras travels to Hong Kong to meet the stranger in person, he reveals himself as Edward Snowden, a computer professional, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, and former contractor for the U.S. Government. After four days of interviews, at his request, Snowden's identity is made public, he relocates to avoid phone calls, and knowing he may face extradition and prosecution he meets with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to apply for refugee status, Poitras believes she is being followed and leaves. The U.S. government request the Hong Kong government to extradite Snowden, his passport is cancelled before he can reach Havana, he is stranded in Russia but granted a year of asylum, meanwhile Greenwald speaks out about the United States using NSA programs for foreign surveillance. After many more interviews, including NSA intelligence official William Binney speaking about the surveillance programs and testifying against them, the film ends with Greenwald, Snowden and Poitras meeting in Russia, they discuss new emerging details on US intelligence programs, careful only to write down and not speak critical pieces of information, Greenwald tears the documents, and removes the scraps from the table. Snowden was easy to approach and sincere, he was the whistleblower to gross abuses of power used by his organisation, this really is revealing inconvenient truth, the revelations caused high impact to everyone in America, and the world, obviously danger would follow, and this film really does remind you of the very real threat that those in power can pose to the citizens they have sworn to protect, you have to concentrate while watching, but it is a very interesting and worthwhile thriller-like documentary. It won the Oscar and BAFTA for Best Documentary. Good!

lasttimeisaw The timing couldn't be more appropriate to watch this Oscar-winning fact-based documentary about the exclusive coverage of the man behind "PRISM Door", Edward Snowden and the repercussions afterwards, simply because under the present background of rampant terrorist attacks globally, whether or not each individual's privacy can be collectively sacrificed in exchange for a possible safeguard of personal safety?It is really self-evident to see the controversy of the situation, the bare bones of the debate is principle Vs. exigency, which is all based on one presumption that we permit our governments to put surveillance on our daily activities of all the citizens, then all the terrorism can be maximally forestalled. If it is the case, how many of us is willing to do so, to forswear the civil liberty? There is a big question mark for this, since it is glaringly against the canon of democracy where all the Western countries are built upon. If we allow that to happen, it will become a huge setback in human history, more pointedly, surveillance may not be a fail-safe manoeuvre to counter terrorism at all, while its collateral damage would include many unimaginable infringements of each individual's personal interests, if all the data can be easily at a wrongdoer's disposal.So, that's why we should stand on the same page with director Laura Poitras and her allies in the film, particularly at a time when the dark cloud of probable danger is hovering above everyone's head, we cannot lose our ground of the nitty-gritty. Largely intriguing human's innate proclivity of inquisitiveness, CITIZENFOUR cunningly proffers the first-hand exposé of Snowden when he hid in Hong Kong and contacted with journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill to go through the scandalous disclosure, meanwhile simultaneously a camera is recording by Poitras on the spot. Now, since all the sensational hullabaloo has dissipated, one can be in a more poised state to watch this film, not just the big picture, we can get a preview of what's inside a man like Snowden, his entire process of "coming out". Poitras selectively and disinterestedly lays out a quite frank introduction of him, what he did is indisputably courageous, but also, as a whistle-blower, he is not "the chosen one", if it were not him, as a matter of time, sooner or later there would be another conscience-aware insider to speak out, the scheme of NSA (USA National Security Agency) is simply too massive to cover, thus more crucially, we should turn our target to them and fish out how that plan can be engineered through all the bureaucracy, yet, this is far from a perfect world, at least for now, the answer is moot.After Snowden left Hong Kong, Poitras' camera can no longer focus on him but on Greenwald and others, whom she has approach to film, what happens doesn't register the same intensity, since anyone who has a healthy common-sense knows which side we should lean on. There is a final reel of watching Snowden's life with his girlfriend in Moscow, no close-up, but medium-shot, soon the film also brings down its curtain, savours of a tad dissatisfaction.As one interviewee mentions, Snowden's whole adventure sounds like a John le Carré novel, so surreal but it is indeed a cast-iron fact, Poitras' documentary serves best as an awareness- agitating gateway to invite us to inspect our own government and resist the temptation of a pipe dream - there is no deus ex machina in solving a deep-rooted social problem. With regard to cinephiles, this film might as well serve as an inviting amuse-gueule for the upcoming Oliver Stone's adaptation, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, let's wish it will be at least remotely le Carré- esque in light of Stone's recent patchy productions.