The film "Citizen Four" about Snowden took the Oscar

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

The director of the film, Laura Poitras, began receiving anonymous encrypted emails from a person under the nickname Citizenfour in January 2013, who claimed that he had evidence of illegal covert surveillance programs run by the NSA in collaboration with other intelligence agencies 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.

Five months later, she and reporters Glenn Greenwald and Even McAskill flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with this man. It turned out to be Edward Snowden.

The Oscar for Laura Poitras is a recognition not only of professionalism as a filmmaker, but also of civic courage. A certain courage is needed in order to covertly work with the most wanted informant secretly from the special services, 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 Academy of Film Academy to make a kind of political statement without risking their reputation."

“The Citizenfour film talks about the many years of battle against the continuous wiretap of communications and presents it in the form of an exciting story about one person. The work of Poitras, Snowden, and journalist Glenn Greenwald helped set a new political course for countries around the world. It is worthy of at least an Oscar, ” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a statement .

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



PS By the way, at the end of 2015, it is planned to premiere the artistic picture "Snowden" , which Oliver Stone is shooting.