Citizenfour * * * 1/2

At the beginning of this documentary I was a little confused. Too much information. But the waters soon clear and we find ourselves on the spot, watching the whole Edward Snowden saga as it unfolds, as opposed to retrospectively. "Immediate" might be the word for this documentary.

Edward Snowden is a man who worked in security for the US government and blew the loudest longest whistle that’s ever been blown. Snowden tells us that rather than confining their investigations to suspects it seems that we are all being watched by Government departments; and I don’t just mean Americans, they’ll happily spy on the citizens of other countries too. Modern technology - mobile phones, emails, credit cards, internet etc make it easy - and so they do it. Seemingly for no other reason than they can. “They” being primarily the National Security Agency. Snowden himself did not work for the NSA but for a company appointed by them to collect data. A fair portion of the documentary is shot in an hotel room in Hong Kong and we just watch him “open the can” so to speak on camera in front of the documentary maker a and a trusted journalist - Glenn Greenwald: (a cracker of a story for Glenn). The film continues through the government reactions, and the mainstream media as the simple fact that we are all being watched - or can be watched - is revealed. (If this concerns you at all ,right now you’re in a very safe place. You’re very likely one of about 3 people at most that read this blog and it is so obscure I very much doubt that even the NSA know about it.)

This is the third documentary that Laura Poitras has made, ruffling the feathers of the United States Government and it’s administrations so I should imagine they’d have rather a hefty file on her by now, especially because she does it so well. This documentary does not embellish and is not selective. It’s objectively made and lets the facts speak for themselves.