A few days after picking up the Oscar for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, Laura Poitras' "Citizenfour" will air tonight on Channel 4. The Film that documents the incredible journey of Edward Snowden, a man now known as a 'whistleblower', will be on at 23h05.
"Since we began hosting screenings in October 2014 the documentary has gone on to receive rave reviews", the documentary executives say, stressing that it "recently won both the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Documentary."
Snowden, of course, wasn't in Los Angeles to watch the honours.
He is living in Moscow, Russia, with his long-time girlfriend Lindsay Mills, whose whereabouts were unknown until "Citizenfour" premiered and showed her with him. At the Academy Awards, host Neil Patrick Harris made a joke about his absence: "The subject of 'Citizenfour', Edward Snowden, could not be here tonight for some treason." In fact, he is not being sought out by the United States under any accusation of treason.
In her victory speech, director Laura Poitras said what Snowden has disclosed, doesn't just expose a threat to consumer's privacy: she thinks it is a threat to democracy itself. "When the decisions that rule us are taken in secret, we lose the power to control and govern ourselves," Poitras stated.
The film documents the interviews held in Hong Kong with Edward Snowden and journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, from which the biggest disclosure in NSA's history would come out, in 2013. At the time, the ex-NSA contractor explained why he decided to blow the whistle on the intelligence agency. "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything," he revealed.
The Academy's decision of awarding "Citizenfour" with an Oscar is being viewed as a political stance of its own, as stated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an American organisation fighting for the protection of privacy and liberties.
The executives of "Citizenfour" probably agree, and they want viewers to be inspired.
"With just over two months until the General Election, it is important that as many people as possible are able to see the film", they wrote, in a message sent to all the users that signed up for info on their website.