--- title: "Citizenfour" year: 2014 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/citizenfour" fi1m_score: 83 critics_score: 82 critics_reviews: 20 published: "2026-09-17T05:18:07.771210+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T05:18:17.900236+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Citizenfour (2014) Directed by Laura Poitras · 1h 53m · MPA R · Documentary **Fi1m score: 83** · Critics 82 from 20 reviews *In a sentence:* A hotel room, a rucksack of laptops and a fire alarm that made us jump harder than most horror films manage > Laura Poitras was in the hotel room when Edward Snowden started talking, and her record of those days is as tense as any spy thriller and a good deal more frightening. The material around the hotel room is thinner, and she seems to know it. ## Synopsis In early 2013 the documentary maker Laura Poitras starts receiving encrypted emails from a stranger who signs himself Citizenfour. He says he works inside American intelligence and that the government is collecting the communications of ordinary citizens on a scale nobody has admitted. Before she meets him, former NSA analyst William Binney describes how the machinery was built. In June she flies to Hong Kong with the journalist Glenn Greenwald and the reporter Ewen MacAskill. The stranger is Edward Snowden, a contractor with a rucksack of laptops, who sits on an unmade hotel bed and explains, over several days, what he has taken and why. Poitras keeps the camera running while Greenwald types and the hotel phone is unplugged. ## Review Laura Poitras was already making a film about surveillance when the subject wrote to her. The emails were encrypted, signed Citizenfour, and came from someone inside American intelligence who said he could prove what the NSA was collecting. In June 2013 she flew to Hong Kong with the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, and she took a camera. *Citizenfour* is what she brought back. It runs 113 minutes, and for about an hour we are in a hotel room with Edward Snowden while he gives up the life he had. That hour is as good as documentary gets. The material around it is competent and flat, and the gap between the two is the film’s main problem. The hotel room is small and the curtains stay shut. Snowden sits on the bed in a white T-shirt with a rucksack of laptops at his feet and explains, in complete sentences, what the programmes do and whom they reach. Greenwald types. MacAskill asks the questions a newspaper would need answered. Poitras stays behind them all; we hear her voice and hardly ever see her. Nothing happens, in the ordinary sense. Nobody runs, nobody is followed, and the only weapon on screen is a memory stick. And it is frightening. Snowden unplugs the hotel phone because it can be made to listen. He pulls a blanket over his head and his keyboard before typing a password, and the two journalists watch him do it and do not laugh. One afternoon a fire alarm goes off, and it is a test, and we jumped, and then we noticed that the three people on screen had gone still. We have sat through a great many films in which men in suits chase a hard drive. We were more afraid in this hotel room than in any of them, because everyone in it plainly believed the door might open. Mathilde Bonnefoy’s editing is the reason the hotel room scenes work. She holds shots long, lets Snowden finish his thoughts, and gives the film its shape with Poitras’s emails, typed out white on black and read in her own level voice. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross put a low electronic hum under the opening drive through an orange-lit tunnel, and most of the time it does its job of making a bedroom feel like a trap. There are moments in Hong Kong when the score tells us to be tense and the pictures already had. We would have trusted the silence. Snowden himself is the surprise. He is calm, exact, occasionally funny, and he has thought about what he is doing for longer than anyone else in the hotel room. He says early on that he does not want the story to be about him, and then it is, and the film catches the moment he understands what that will cost. Poitras does not test him. There is no counter-witness, no official, no former colleague who thought he was wrong. The film knows which side it is on and says so, which is more honest than a staged balance would have been. Outside the hotel room the film is thinner. William Binney, who helped build this machinery before he turned against it, is a useful voice. Jacob Appelbaum and Kevin Bankston explain the technology and the law to rooms of people, and footage of Barack Obama promising oversight is placed where it will sting. Trevor Paglen, Kirsten Johnson and Katy Scoggin shoot the exteriors: a windowless building rising in the desert, aerials in a field, motorways at night. They are handsome, but they are also the standard furniture of the surveillance documentary, and after the hotel they feel like waiting. The last stretch, which we will not describe, adds a development the film has no time to earn. Poitras had made two films about America after 11 September 2001, *My Country, My Country* (2006) and *The Oath* (2010), and this completes the set. It is the plainest of the three and the best, because this time the subject came to her. It makes its case by showing one man in one room for an hour, and most surveillance documentaries would give a great deal for that hour. Watch it with your phone in another room. You will feel foolish for about ten minutes. *Fi1m score 83, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics agree that Citizenfour works first as a thriller and only second as journalism. Nearly all the praise settles on the Hong Kong hotel room scenes, where Poitras films Snowden as the leaks begin, and reviewers describe the odd sensation of watching history recorded as it happens. Several credit the restraint of her fly-on-the-wall approach and the tension of the editing. Snowden himself comes across as calm, articulate and more likeable than many expected. The reservations are few and gather in one place: what happens once the film leaves Hong Kong. Time Out and Radio Times both find the later stretches lose energy. A handful note the partisan viewpoint and narrow scope, though most treat that as a choice rather than a fault. The Hollywood Reporter finds the whole thing oddly cool in temperature. The one real dissent comes from Total Film, which grants that the access is remarkable but says Poitras has no idea how to shape it, surrounding the central scenes with flat footage. Otherwise the spread is narrow. ### Reviews we read (20) - **Empire**, Simon Crook (90/100, inferred): The film is the definitive 21st-century documentary, capturing a global tech conspiracy leaked in real time by its source. Poitras delivers a stark, clear-eyed warning of vanishing freedoms through bold, unblinking filmmaking. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/citizenfour-2-review/) - **Film Comment**, Nicolas Rapold (90/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a sophisticated and riveting work of cinema verité that goes beyond advocacy to become an instant classic of paranoid cinema. They single out the high-tension editing of the Hong Kong hotel room interviews and the palpable sense of danger and claustrophobia it creates. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/citizenfour-laura-poitras-edward-snowden/) - **IndieWire** (A-): The critic praises its bracing access and mesmerizing look at how Snowden released the information and why it matters, steering toward a broader narrative. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/2014/10/review-edward-snowden-doc-citizenfour-is-a-bracing-look-at-nsa-whistleblowers-impact-27132/) - **Sight and Sound**, Nick Bradshaw (90/100, inferred): The critic praises Poitras's ground-zero record of Snowden's revelations for finding intensity in intimacy, with the Hong Kong hotel room sequences playing like a reality spy thriller that captures history in the making. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/film-week-citizenfour) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (90/100, inferred): The film is a triumph of journalism that shows Snowden vindicated. It focuses on the tense Hong Kong hotel meetings where the disclosures unfold through Poitras's eyes. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/11/citizenfour-review-snowden-vindicated-poitras-nsa-journalism) - **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (Critic’s Pick): The critic sees the film as a tense, frightening thriller that focuses on Snowden's bravery and idealism in exposing surveillance. It notes the partial, partisan perspective but praises its cinematic power over balanced journalism. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/movies/citizenfour-a-documentary-about-edward-j-snowden.html) - **Variety**, Ronnie Scheib (90/100, inferred): The documentary extraordinarily records Snowden's revelations in real time in a Hong Kong hotel, showing information as a weapon that cuts both ways. It praises Poitras's portrayal of Snowden as calm and sincere amid justified paranoia. [Read](https://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-citizenfour-1201327600/) - **Financial Times**, Nigel Andrews (85/100, inferred): It is a gripping true-life spy thriller and edge-of-seat viewing. The film centers on the likeable, self-effacing Snowden in the Hong Kong days as leaks turn into a flood. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/fbfa54de-5522-11e4-b616-00144feab7de) - **Vulture** (85/100, inferred): The critic calls it an avant-garde paranoid conspiracy thriller that puts viewers right in the room as history is made with Snowden, holding attention despite some long hotel scenes. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2014/10/movie-review-citizenfour-edward-snowden.html) - **Little White Lies**, David Jenkins (4/4/4): Poitras delivers a claustrophobic real-life spy thriller profiling Snowden as a hyper-articulate whistleblower sacrificing everything to expose surveillance, with the film's existence itself affirming the power of resistance. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/citizenfour) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kenneth Turan (80/100, inferred): The film is an advocacy documentary with compelling you-are-there footage of Snowden and Greenwald in Hong Kong, warning of the end of privacy. It notes the limited scope and insider bias but calls it a significant service in exposing NSA actions. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-citizenfour-review-20141024-column.html) - **Radio Times**, Victoria Luxford (4/5): The documentary thrillingly captures Snowden unveiling flagrant abuses of power in a tense, history-making setting, offering a shocking snapshot of the threat posed by those in authority despite some loss of urgency later on. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-ewy959/citizenfour/) - **Screen Daily** (80/100, inferred): Poitras opts for poignancy over heavy-handedness in chronicling the collaboration with Snowden and Greenwald, delivering an engaging thriller setup with aesthetic merit and accessible context on surveillance. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/citizenfour/5078556.article) - **Slant Magazine** (80/100, inferred): The critic notes how Poitras provides privileged insight into Snowden while keeping focus on government spying, delivering clarity like a gifted trial lawyer on an urgent topic. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/citizenfour/) - **Time Out**, Dave Calhoun (4/5): The film's quiet, matter-of-fact sobriety is as chilling as Snowden's revelations of mass spying, delivering an intimate human portrait of the whistleblower at his moment of no return, though it loses energy after Hong Kong. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/citizenfour) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Todd McCarthy (70/100, inferred): The critic finds it a revelatory and fascinating documentary profiling Snowden at the moment of his leaks, though oddly lacking in tension with a very cool temperature. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/citizenfour-new-york-review-740117/) - **Total Film**, Emma Morgan (40/100, inferred): The doc offers incredible as-it-happens access but lacks any idea how to present the material, bookending the central scenes with flat footage. Snowden emerges as surprisingly sympathetic, yet the infodump approach goes disappointingly unexploited. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/citizenfour-review/) - **The Wrap** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it one of the year's most unsettling thrillers, emphasizing the suspense in the secrecy surrounding the story and the terrifying ramifications of the NSA spying revelations. Poitras' restrained, fly-on-the-wall style is singled out for allowing the material and subjects to speak directly. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/citizenfour-review-edward-snowden-glenn-greenwald-nsa-spying/) - **Deadline**, Jeremy Gerard (85/100, inferred): The review describes the film as a chilling documentary capturing Laura Poitras' process of documenting Edward Snowden's NSA leaks and his meetings with journalists. It highlights the ongoing global impact of the revelations and Snowden's flight to Russia. [Read](https://deadline.com/2014/10/citizenfour-review-edward-snowden-laura-poitras-857412/) - **Eye for Film**, Owen Van Spall (85/100, inferred): Poitras crafts an illuminating and compelling documentary using exclusive footage from Snowden's Hong Kong hotel room meetings. The film stands as the first essential post-Snowden work, frightening yet unmissable for its tangible sense of intangible invasion. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/citizenfour-2014-film-review-by-owen-van-spall) ## Details - **Director:** Laura Poitras - **Director:** Laura Poitras - **Writer:** Laura Poitras - **Cinematography:** Kirsten Johnson, Trevor Paglen, Katy Scoggin - **Editor:** Mathilde Bonnefoy - **Music:** Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross - **Producer:** Mathilde Bonnefoy, Dirk Wilutzky, Laura Poitras - **Cast:** Edward Snowden as Self; Glenn Greenwald as Self; Laura Poitras as Self; William Binney as Self; Barack Obama as Self; Jacob Appelbaum as Self; Julian Assange as Self; Jeremy Scahill as Self - **Runtime:** 1h 53m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 10 October 2014 - **Genres:** Documentary - **Box office:** $3 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX2uyP9QGjs ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AT, AU, CA, CH, ES, FR, GB, IE, IT, JP, NZ, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 2015: Best Documentary Feature Film (won) ## If you liked this - *The Conversation* (1974), Fi1m 92: Coppola’s wiretapper hears one sentence too many; the paranoia here had a grandfather — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-conversation.md) - *The Lives of Others* (2006), Fi1m 84: East Berlin, 1984, a Stasi man in an attic listening; the state as a lodger — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-lives-of-others.md) - *The Oath* (2010): Poitras’s earlier film, a Yemeni taxi driver and Guantánamo; slower, stranger, worth the patience - *All the President's Men* (1976), Fi1m 90: Two reporters, a car park and a lot of typing; journalism as procedure, done properly — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/all-the-presidents-men.md) - *Collective* (2019), Fi1m 88: Romanian reporters take apart a hospital scandal; the same fly-on-the-wall nerve, different country — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/collective.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/citizenfour