Opening with a vivid evocation of the first clandestine meeting in a Hong Kong hotel of Edward Snowden, filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald, Snowden turns skillfully and insightfully backwards through the tumultuous career of the precocious computer wizard, would-be solider, CIA employee and, finally, conscientious objector. Stone gives especially careful scrutiny to the wrenching soul-searching that lead to Snowden’s fateful decision to purposefully leak classified government documents, giving real human dimension to a now larger-than-life figure alternately shrouded, or clouded, by heroizing and defamatory myth. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is an utterly convincing Snowden: boyish, overzealous, and fueled by an authentic patriotism that ultimately leads him to question the authority of his powerful employer. By offering Snowden as an interrogation of the responsibilities of government and citizenship in the 21st century—and on the eve of a fatefully charged US election—Stone delivers an urgent and provocative film, demanding us to rethink what it means to be an engaged patriot.

Oliver Stone will appear at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics at 6pm. The conversation will be simulcast live at the HFA before Snowden. For more information on the event, visit their website.