Cover-Up

117' 2025

dir.: Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus

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In her latest film, a collaboration with Mark Obenhaus, Laura Poitras once again ventures into the world of clandestine power: classified documents, wartime corruption, and those who bear the cost of truth. The protagonist of “Cover Up” is Seymour Hersh, the legendary investigative journalist who exposed some of the darkest secrets of the U.S. military and politics.

Getting the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh to open up on camera took Laura Poitras twenty years. In her new film, a collaboration with Mark Obenhaus, the Oscar-winning director once again delves into the world of power and secrecy: classified documents, wartime corruption, and the people who bear the cost of truth. Hersh, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, remains undaunted in his nineties, still exposing abuses of power and investigating war crimes in Gaza. Skillfully assembled from riveting archival footage, the documentary places the events that Hersh brought to light, such as the brutality of the U.S. Army in Vietnam and Iraq, the Watergate scandal, and Pinochet’s coup, in a broader social and political context. “We’re a culture of enormous violence,” Hersh remarks. “You can’t just have a country who does that and looks the other way.”

Konrad Wirkowski

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