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Citizenfour (Review)

Just last weekend, New Westminster had a film fest of its own — still small, but it’s already outgrown its original doc-only format. Amazing how things change over the years. The first film I saw in the festival was Citizenfour.

This one is a documentary exploring the dangers of the fact that someone is always spying on you. I’m not talking about the illuminati, I’m talking about the NSA. Anyways, some time back, when Laura Poitras received anonymous encrypted emails stating they had proof of the NSA spying illegally, this spawned a get-together in a Hong Kong hotel. Poitras teamed up with Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, two reporters, and together they meet up with this mysterious stranger, a young man named Edward Snowden. Snowden then goes on to explain what NSA is up to as he meets multiple times with his reporter friends. In the process, NSA itself gets suspicious of Snowden, cancelling his advance rent payments, and having construction machines waiting outside his house while he resides in a Chinese hotel.

This documentary shared an amazing insight into what the NSA does as well as how one can protect themselves from being monitored. NSA has been quite the subject of  talk for a few years now, and this film covers it perfectly. Poitras did a good job showing viewers the dangers, and the opening shots as well as the transition shots between meetings are very interesting. One must always be cautious. I know that myself, having one of the rarest last names out there.

(“Citizenfour poster” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia)

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