“Snowden”, Oliver Stone’s take on NSA leaker Edward Snowden, has arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival along with its all-star cast. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Snowden, is joined by Director Oliver Stone, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson and Ben Schnetzer at the world premiere on Friday night – day two of TIFF 2016.
The movie begins with a look at Snowden’s military past, where injuries to both legs led to his honourable discharge, and follows the world’s most prolific hacker to his eventual demise (or promise, depending on how you look at it).
People familiar with Snowden’s story will know the outcome.
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Snowden famously fled to Hong Kong, coming to international attention when he shared those classified documents with a group of journalists, who published material in The Guardian, The Washington Post and The New York Times. As of now, Snowden is still living in an undisclosed location in Russia, where his asylum sentence has been extended to three years.
The screenplay, penned by Kieran Fitzgerald, was based on two books written about the leaker, The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus, by Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena.
Watch this space for a livestream of the TIFF red carpet starting at approximately 8:15 p.m. ET tonight.