A Berlin view of surveillance
Franco-American coproduction receives award at the Academy Awards.
In Germany, ever since the first revelations by Edward Snowden the National Security Agency’s spying and surveillance activities have been viewed particularly critically. Filmmaker Laura Poitras, who was contacted by Snowden after his departure from the NSA, has been based in Berlin since 2012. “Here, people respect my privacy and I can best protect my sources,” she commented in a 2014 interview with the newspaper Berliner Zeitung. It was in Germany that Poitras also found partners for her film project on the American secret services which she completed in 2014, naming it “Citizenfour”, an alias chosen by Snowden. Poitras (M.) has now been jointly awarded the Oscar for the best documentary film together with German producer Dirk Wilutzky and Mathilde Bonnefoy, a Franco-American cutter and producer who has been living in Berlin for more than 20 years now. “Citizenfour” is a coproduction by Bayerischer Rundfunk and Norddeutscher Rundfunk.
