Citizenfour received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars. The film was directed by Laura Poitras concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal." In January 2013, Laura Poitras received an encrypted e-mail from a stranger who called himself Citizen Four. In it, he offered her inside information about illegal wiretapping practices of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Poitras had already been working for several years on a film about monitoring programs in the US, the result of the September 11 attacks. In June 2013, accompanied by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill, she went to Hong Kong with her camera for the first meeting with the stranger, who identified himself as Edward Snowden. Several other meetings followed. The recordings gained from the meetings form the basis of the film.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, was arrested at Ecuador's embassy in London on April 11, 2019. He was cornered in a tiny building for seven years, with threatens to undermine the organization he leads and fracture the movement he inspired.
Filmed over six years, Risk is a character study capturing his confinement. Director Laura Poitras finds herself caught between the motives and contradictions of Assange and his inner circle.