Edward Snowden director moves on to more controversy
Filmmaker focuses on dissident artist after acclaim of Snowden project
The director of the Oscar-winning documentary on Edward Snowden is back on Chinese soil to work on another secret project with a controversial figure - but it's got nothing to do with the American whistle-blower.
Instead, Laura Poitras has just spent several days filming an art project with dissident artist Ai Weiwei in Beijing.
"It was great to meet him. I really admire his work and his courage," Poitras said on Friday, after the premiere of Citizenfour in Hong Kong.
It's the first time Poitras has returned to the city since June 2013 when she met Snowden, the former US government contractor who leaked top-secret documents to the press and exposed the clandestine collection of metadata as well as the US hacking of mainland Chinese and Hong Kong targets.
The leaks sparked a global debate on privacy and the surveillance overreach of the US government and its allies.
Before coming to Hong Kong, Poitras spent five days in Beijing filming Ai - who is banned from leaving the mainland - as he collaborated with hacker and computer security expert Jacob Appelbaum as part of an art show called Seven on Seven, which will be shown on May 2 at the New Museum in New York.