Snowden

Snowden (2016)

Timing: 2:14 (134 min)

7.1/10
4230

7.208/10
230098

7.3/10
172000

All about film

Video 4

Photo 51

Actors and characters

Release date

2016-09-15

Country

Germany, United States

Production

Endgame Entertainment, Vendian Entertainment, KrautPack Entertainment

Genre

Drama, History, Crime, Thriller

Budget

$40 000 000

Revenue

$37 357 216

Website

http://snowdenfilm.com/

Director

Oliver Stone

Actors

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Scott Eastwood, Timothy Olyphant, Ben Schnetzer, LaKeith Stanfield, Rhys Ifans
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Moritz Borman, Philip Schulz-Deyle, Eric Kopeloff, Fernando Sulichin, James D. Stern, Tom Ortenberg, Jérôme Seydoux, Douglas Hansen, Romain Le Grand, Michael Bassick

Operator

Anthony Dod Mantle

Composer

Craig Armstrong

Artist

Audition

Mary Vernieu, Lucy Bevan

Editing

Lee Percy, Alex Márquez
All team (89)

• After filming, Oliver Stone met with Edward Snowden and showed him a rough cut of the film.
• Shailene Woodley learned to pole dance for her role.
• This is Oliver Stone's first narrative feature film shot on digital cameras. Previously, the director had only used digital cameras for his documentary projects.
• Before filming, Edward Snowden advised Oliver Stone not to depict the NSA command center as lavish as it is typically shown in movies and television shows, as these centers are actually maintained on very limited budgets.
• Nicolas Cage previously starred in Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" (2006) and, due to a good relationship with Stone, agreed to participate in this project as well.
• While filming in Germany, Oliver Stone's mother passed away. Stone was forced to miss her funeral due to the project's time and budgetary constraints. Otherwise, completing the film within the existing budget and schedule would not have been possible.
• Filming began on February 16, 2015. At that time, the film was slated for release on December 25, 2015. The release date was then pushed back to May 2016 because the visual effects were too complex and required more time to complete. After the film was fully finished, the premiere date was moved again to September 2016 because the distributor wanted to avoid competition with summer blockbusters.
• This is the 20th feature film directed by Oliver Stone.
• This film was one of the first to be shot primarily using the ARRI 65 6.5k camera.
• Before deciding to film this movie, Oliver Stone met with Edward Snowden three times in Moscow.
• Melissa Leo played the role of journalist Laura Poitras, who previously made the film "Citizenfour: The Snowden Files" (2014).
• To ensure the script didn't leak, Oliver Stone worked on it only on one computer that had no internet connection.
• The dating site used by Lindsay Mills and Edward Snowden to communicate is a reference to the classic anime "Ghost in the Shell" (1995).
• Shailene Woodley was cast in the film on November 15, 2014 – on her 23rd birthday.
• The US premiere took place on September 16, 2016, the day after Oliver Stone's birthday. The director turned 70 years old.
• Tom Wilkinson previously played the role of President Joseph F. Kennedy in the series "The Kennedys" (2011). Oliver Stone directed the film "JFK" (1991).
• During its opening weekend, the film had the lowest box office results of any film directed by Oliver Stone.
• Timothy Olyphant and Zachary Quinto both appeared in Hitman films. Olyphant starred in "Hitman" (2007), and Quinto in "Hitman: Agent 47" (2015).
• The character Corbin O'Brien is a reference to the character O'Brien from George Orwell's novel '1984'.
• The film is based on Luke Harding's book 'The Snowden Files: The Story of the Most Wanted Man in the World' and Anatoly Kucherena's 'Time of the Octopus'.
• Oliver Stone met with Julian Assange in April 2013 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but Assange himself did not appear in the film, even as a character. In reality, Assange actively helped Snowden leave Hong Kong. The only participant from WikiLeaks who took part in this film is Sarah Harrison, who traveled with Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow and supported him there. She appears in archival footage towards the end of the film.
• Snowden uses a Rubik's Cube to secretly smuggle out a microSD card from a secure NSA facility. He uses an updated version of this cube, as evidenced by the small slots on its faces. Snowden worked at the NSA in 2013 and contacted journalists in the same year, while the cube model he uses only appeared in 2014.
• When Snowden leaves his hotel room, a cell phone can be noticed inside the microwave.
• As Snowden copies files onto his microSD card on the base in Hawaii, he does so from a computer running Windows, and dozens of pop-up windows appear reporting file copying. In reality, only one pop-up window should have appeared.
• During a video chat between Janine and Greenwald and others from the hotel room, Janine receives an image showing depth of field in the camera, as two people sitting behind Greenwald are out of focus. This wouldn't have happened if it had been filmed with a webcam.
• Despite being portrayed as an extremely experienced hacker, Snowden copies files onto the card simply by dragging and dropping. Any advanced user, let alone a hacker, would use the command line for this and minimize windows to keep them off-screen.
• As Snowden and Lindsay walk through a crowd of protesters, a woman with a stroller can be seen on Lindsay's side. In the next shot, that same woman is now on Snowden's side. Furthermore, it’s clearly visible that the baby in the stroller is just a doll.
• When Snowden is making pasta in the kitchen, he pours boiling water into the sink. Steam then hits his face and his glasses fog up. He then collapses, and when he is lying down, it’s visible that his glasses, which were fogged up just a few seconds earlier, are now completely clear.
• Nicolas Cage previously starred in Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" (2006) and, due to his good relationship with Stone, agreed to participate in this project of his as well.
• Melissa Leo played the role of journalist Laura Poitras, who previously made the film "Citizenfour: The Truth About Snowden" (2014).
• The dating site used by Lyndie Mills and Edward Snowden to communicate is a reference to the classic anime "Ghost in the Shell" (1995).
• Shailene Woodley was cast in the film on November 15, 2014 – her 23rd birthday.
• Tom Wilkinson previously played the role of President Joseph F. Kennedy in the series "The Kennedys" (2011). Oliver Stone directed the film "JFK" (1991).
• Timothy Olyphant and Zachary Quinto both starred in Hitman films. Olyphant appeared in "Hitman" (2007), and Quinto in "Hitman: Agent 47" (2015).
• The character Corbin O'Brien is a reference to the character O'Brien from George Orwell's novel "1984".
• The film is based on the books "The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man" by Luke Harding and "Time of the Octopus" by Anatoly Kucherena.
• Oliver Stone met with Julian Assange in April 2013 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, but Assange himself did not appear in the film, even as a character. In reality, Assange actively helped Snowden leave Hong Kong. The only participant from WikiLeaks who took part in this film is Sarah Harrison, who travelled with Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow and supported him there. She is shown in archival footage towards the end of the film.