Hero or Traitor? Or Something in Between?

The sensational new documentary on Edward Snowden, CITIZENFOUR, opens here in Nashville at the Belcourt Theater next week. I reviewed the film for the Nashville Scene in this week’s issue. A snippet:

The film’s center, dramatically and chronologically, is the middle hour focusing on the fateful encounter of Snowden, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, and documentarian Poitras (behind her camera, occasionally heard but never seen) in a Hong Kong hotel room for eight days in June 2013. Poitras’ camera was rolling from the start, giving us a front-row (bedside?) seat as history unfolds. Columbia Journalism School dean Steve Coll likens it to having footage of Bob Woodward’s first parking-garage meeting with Deep Throat.

From this seemingly mundane procedural footage, we learn that extended sequences of a few people talking in a hotel room, working on laptops, watching television, munching on room service and taking an occasional phone call can be downright spellbinding.

For anyone who cares about civil liberties in a free society, unmissable.