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U.S. director-producer Laura Poitras, who won an Oscar and an Emmy with Edward Snowden film “Citizenfour,” and recently took the Golden Lion at Venice with opioid epidemic pic “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” will be the Guest of Honor at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The 35th edition of the festival takes place from Nov. 9 to 20.

Poitras will be honored at IDFA with the Retrospective and Top 10 programs, in which she curates 10 films. The Top 10 program includes reflections on political imprisonment (“Hunger” by Steve McQueen; “This Is Not a Film” by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb), incarceration and psychiatry (Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies”), and genocide (Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”). As part of the Top 10, Poitras will be in conversation with several of her selected filmmakers during the festival’s public talks program.

In the Retrospective section, IDFA presents all seven films directed by Poitras from 2003 to today.

Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras will be guest of honor at the 35th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), running from November 9 to 20.

Poitras is currently on a packed festival tour with All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, which won the Golden Lion in Venice and is now an awards season contender. After Venice, the title screened in Toronto and has dates set for New York and the BFI London Film Festival.

As guest of honor at IDFA, Poitras will be feted with a retrospective and has also been given carte blanche to curate 10 films that have influenced her work and shaped her view of the world.

Her Top 10 selections include Steve McQueen’s Hunger, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s This is Not A Film, Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.

As part of the sidebar, Poitras will also conduct on-stage conversations with a number of the selected filmmakers.

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Laura Poitras, the Oscar-winning director of Citizenfour, whose latest doc, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, won the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, will be this year’s guest of honor at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

IDFA will host a retrospective of Poitras’ work, screening all 7 documentaries she has directed, from her 2003 feature debut Flag Wars, made in collaboration with artist Linda Goode Bryant, a cinéma vérité film on the gentrification of a working-class African American neighborhood by white gays and lesbians, to All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which follows the career of photographer and artist Nan Goldin and her campaign to hold Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family responsible for the opioid addiction crisis. Poitras is perhaps best known for her portraits of Edward Snowden (the Oscar-winning Citizenfour) and Julian Assange (2016’s Risk).

Poitras will also curate...

The Oscar and Peabody award-winning documentarian will be receive the Charles Guggenheim award on June 16.

The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced that AFI Docs will pay tribute to Laura Poitras.

The director of Risk and Citizenfour will be the festival’s 2017 Charles Guggenheim Symposium honouree.

The symposium will take place at the Newseum on June 16 and will include an in-depth conversation with Poitras along with clips from her films.

Poitras’ latest film Risk, a six-year project following WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, was released by Neon earlier this month and will air on Showtime this summer.

Poitras’ documentary catalogue also includes The Oath, Flag Wars, which was Emmy nominated and won a Peabody Award, and My Country, My Country, which was nominated for a best documentary feature Oscar.

In 2015, Poitras won the Academy Award for Citizenfour. That same year, Poitras co-founded Field of Vision, an entity that commissions and creates original short-form nonfiction films about global events...

Laura Poitras won an Oscar for Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour The American Film Institute (AFI) has announced AFI Docs will pay tribute to Laura Poitras — the director of Risk, about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and the Academy Award®-winning Edward Snowden portrait Citizenfour (2014) — as the festival's 2017 Charles Guggenheim Symposium honoree.

Each year, the AFI Docs Charles Guggenheim Symposium honours a master of the nonfiction art form. Taking place at the Newseum on June 16, the Symposium will include an in-depth conversation with Poitras along with clips from her work, which includes The Oath, My Country, My Country and Flag Wars.

AFI Docs director Michael Lumpkin said: "Poitras has the extraordinary instinct and ability to put her camera in the heart of history as it unfolds, regardless of the risk. Using her keen eye, Poitras reveals worlds just beyond what we can see. We are honored to celebrate her remarkable career and dedication to the documentary form.

One of this year's must see documentaries is Citizenfour, directed by Laura Poitras, an inside look at the story of whistblower Edward Snowden. Poitras was contacted by Snowden early on and was right there with him, filming the entire event, as he leaked the information from Hong Kong about the Nsa's spying program that stunned the world in May of 2013. Poitras has made two other provocative docs previously, The Oath and Flag Wars, and she's back with another one that is a bit more intimate, but still as powerful. I raved about Citizenfour after catching its premiere at the New York Film Festival, and I met up with Laura for an interview in New York City. What follows is a fascinating discussion about the power of storytelling. I wrote in my Nyff review, "The film exceeds on all levels because it is so expertly made by a filmmaker who can...

When Edward Snowden suddenly appeared on the public radar – frantically blowing the whistle on the outrageous over-reachings of the international intelligence community, and specifically the Nsa – opinions were divided. While many were enraged by the revelations, some branded the man behind them a traitor, and the Us government issued criminal charges. Safely ensconced overseas, Snowden continues to disseminate ‘sensitive’ information, and has received a number of awards for his trouble. His ongoing story is a fascinating one, to be sure, and Hollywood has already begun to mine it for projects. But, it is those first shocking days that are the subject of a new documentary film, Citizenfour – and the teaser trailer that has been released suggests it makes for hard-hitting and compelling viewing.

Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker, Laura Poitras (Flag Wars, My Country My Country) – a MacArthur Fellow and founding member of the Freedom Of The Press Foundation – Citizenfour...

The New York Film Festival told us its main slate. We believed it. But it was hiding something. Revealed in an official press release (by an Nyff whistleblower??), Oscar-nominated documentarian Laura Poitras’s Edward Snowden documentary “Citizenfour” has been added to the festival's Main Slate line-up. The hush-hush film will have its world premiere Friday, October 10. The general public won't have to wait long to get its hands on the document: RADiUS, in association with Participant Media and HBO Films, will release the film on Oct. 24. According to the festival's update, Poitras was in-deep on a film about national security abuse in post-9/11 America when she was contacted via encrypted e-mails by “citizen four,” an Nsa insider aiming to blow the lid off the government agency's covert surveillance program. She took the message seriously. Five months later, Poitras and "The Guardian" reporter Glenn Greenwald were sitting in Hong Kong, chatting with "citizen four" a.

Los Angeles (AP) — Laura Poitras' skill and boldness as a documentary filmmaker have gained her Oscar and Emmy nominations, Sundance Film Festival honors and a public TV showcase, even if her work fell short of making a "Super Size Me" splash.

But her role as the first point of contact for disclosures about U.S. surveillance programs has drawn the glare of attention to the independent filmmaker who, abruptly, has pushed documentaries deeper into the realm of journalistic immediacy.

For peers and backers of Poitras, the 2012 recipient of a $500,000 "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, it's unsurprising that she has seized a story worth telling. However, her crucial involvement with a confidential source and two newspapers on the same big exclusive is extraordinary.

"She's incredibly driven and determined and she doesn't let obstacles get in the way," said Simon Kilmurry, executive producer of PBS' documentary series "Pov," a home to Poitras' work.

Los Angeles — Laura Poitras' skill and boldness as a documentary filmmaker have gained her Oscar and Emmy nominations, Sundance Film Festival honors and a public TV showcase, even if her work fell short of making a "Super Size Me" splash.

But her role as the first point of contact for disclosures about U.S. surveillance programs has drawn the glare of attention to the independent filmmaker who, abruptly, has pushed documentaries deeper into the realm of journalistic immediacy.

For peers and backers of Poitras, the 2012 recipient of a $500,000 "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, it's unsurprising that she has seized a story worth telling. However, her crucial involvement with a confidential source and two newspapers on the same big exclusive is extraordinary.

"She's incredibly driven and determined and she doesn't let obstacles get in the way," said Simon Kilmurry, executive producer of PBS' documentary series "Pov," a home to Poitras' work.