In 2013, filmmaker Laura Poitras started receiving encrypted emails from “CITIZENFOUR”—an unidentified user ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programs run by the US. So she flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden.

Before earning an Oscar® nomination with All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras won an Academy Award® for Citizenfour. Capturing lightning in a bottle, the documentarian worked with whistleblower Edward Snowden as he exposed the United States’ far-reaching program of mass surveillance.