Born in Boston, USA in 1964, Laura Poitras is an American director, film producer and documentary maker. In 2015, her work Citizenfour received an Oscar for Best Documentary. After the US invaded Iraq, Poitras presented 9/11 Trilogy, three feature-length documentaries. The first of these, My Country, My Country (2006), follows the family of an Iraqi doctor during the occupation by the United States; The Oath (2010) interweaves the stories of two men involved with Al Qaeda, and Citizenfour (2014) focuses on the revelations of the informer Edward Snowden about the enormous scale of the NSA’s global surveillance programmes. Her most recent film, Risk, about the life of Julian Assange, was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2016.
Signal Flow, 2018
Video installation, mixed media
With a varied set of new works, Laura Poitras creates a collective work presented as a narrated journey through the Sicilian countryside. In particular, the installation highlights the imposing presence of American military bases on the island, which serves as a key site for American military communications and international military operations using drones. For over thirty years, Sicilians of all generations have opposed the creation of these infrastructures. The immersive installation grew out of a film-clinic conducted by Poitras with local filmmakers.