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CITIZENFOUR

by Laura Poitras

CITIZENFOUR, Laura Poitras' highly anticipated film about worldwide mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is opening in Europe and the United States this fall. CITIZENFOUR is the final film in Poitras' 9/11 trilogy, following the Academy Award-nominated My Country, My Country on the Iraq War and Emmy-nominated The Oath about Guantánamo.

Piffl Medien will release the film theatrically in Germany on November 6. Co-production partners in Germany are Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR).

Poitras produced CITIZENFOUR with Berlin-based Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky. Bonnefoy is also the editor. Post-production has taken place in Germany, and Deutscher Filmförderfonds (DFFF) has provided production support. Laura Poitras currently lives in Berlin.

CITIZENFOUR will be featured as a special presentation at the Copenhagen International Film Festival (CPH:DOX) on November 11. Poitras will also curate a series of films, talks, and art projects for CPH:DOX which she has titled "Astro Noise." On November 23, the film will be featured as a special presentation at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

CITIZENFOUR had its world premiere on October 10 at the New York Film Festival and the UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 17. On October 24, the film was released theatrically in the United States by RADiUS, in association with Participant Media and HBO Documentary Films. In the United Kingdom, the film is distributed by BRITDOC Foundation and was released in cinemas on October 31 by Artificial Eye, as a Film4 co-production.

World sales for CITIZENFOUR are handled by Praxis Films Berlin GmbH.

In January 2013, Laura Poitras started receiving encrypted e-mails from an anonymous source identified as "citizen four", who claimed to have evidence of illegal covert surveillance programs run by the NSA in collaboration with other intelligence agencies worldwide. In June 2013 she and reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her. The resulting film is a real-life thriller, unfolding minute-by-minute before our eyes.

Laura Poitras' films have premiered at festival worldwide. My Country, My Country (2007) was nominated for an Academy Award, an Independent Spirit Award, and an Emmy Award. The Oath (2010) won the Sundance Cinematography Award, Edinburgh Film Festival Documentary Jury Award, and a Gotham Award for Best Documentary. Additional honors include a Peabody Award and a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship.

Poitras has taught filmmaking at Duke and Yale universities, and in 2012 her work was selected for the Whitney Biennial. She will have her first solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 2016.

Her reporting has appeared in DER SPIEGEL, The New York Times, The Guardian,The Washington Post, and The Intercept. Her HSA reporting contributed to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service awarded to The Guardian and The Washington Post.

She is a co-founder of The Intercept, along with Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill.

 

For further information and requests please contact:

claudiatomassini & associates
International Film Publicity
Saarbrücker Str. 24 | Haus B | 2. OG
10405 Berlin
Tel.:+49 30 44 34 06 06
Fax:+49 30 47 37 77 33
Mobile:+49 173 205 5794
 

 

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