The screening of the documentary Citizenfour about NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden at SA’s Encounters documentary film festival is timely, writes Stefanie Jason.
This year’s Oscar-winning documentary about the United States’s National Security Agency (NSA) leaks comes to South Africa at a crucial time. Surveillance is being debated once again, and the actions of Edward Snowden, this movie’s protagonist, are the reason.
Encounters film festival highlights: What to watch
The provisions of an Act allowing for the collection of bulk phone records of American citizens have expired and the Senate has spent the week debating its renewal. The USA Patriot Act was subjected to scrutiny when Snowden, then an NSA contractor, blew the whistle on such improper snooping.
Citizenfour (showing at Encounters 17, the South African International Documentary Festival) is a real-life neo-noir that is nothing short of brilliant. It brings to mind Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State, and will leave you chilled but aware of the possibilities of internet spying. “It’s not science fiction; this is happening right now,” Snowden reminds us in the documentary.
Citizenfour takes its title from the pseudonym Snowden used when signing off the initial encrypted emails he sent to the film’s director, Laura Poitras. He had contacted her and Glenn Greenwald, then a Guardian journalist, to disclose NSA documents. The last instalment of Poitras’s documentary trilogy about the US post-9/11, Citizenfour records the eight days she spent with Greenwald and Snowden at a Hong Kong hotel, where the whistle-blower had flown before the disclosures.
Full review by Stefanie Jason, see Mail & Guardian
Citizenfour: at The Labia Theatre and Ster Kinekor V&A Waterfront – for times visit
