Spotlights feature conversations with high-profile film and television industry professionals who share helpful advice and insights on their career experiences and creative processes.
Celebrated filmmaker Laura Poitras joins Sundance Collab for a live, online conversation about her explosive new documentary Cover-Up.
Cover-Up, which Poitras directed with Mark Obenhaus, traces the work of America’s preeminent investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh. Hersh has exposed government corruption and abuses of power since the late-1960s, from the wars in Vietnam and Iraq to the present day. His work helped expose the My Lai massacre in 1969, the CIA’s domestic spying program in 1974, and the United States torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. Cover-Up marks the first feature documentary about Hersh and his work, which remains massively influential (and at times controversial) to this day.
Among the most acclaimed documentary filmmakers of her generation, Poitras is best known as the director of CITIZENFOUR, a high-risk film that exposed the U.S. government’s global mass surveillance programs. CITIZENFOUR won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2015. In 2022, Poitras’ film All the Beauty and the Bloodshed won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, only the second time in the festival’s history that a documentary film has won the top prize. Poitras’ film The Oath premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Excellence in Cinematography Award.
Cover-Up premiered at the 2025 Venice Film Festival and has since screened at Toronto, Telluride, the New York Film Festival, and festivals worldwide. The National Board of Review named the film its Best Documentary of 2025, and Netflix acquired the film after its festival premiere. Cover-Up will be available to stream on Netflix beginning on December 26, 2025.
This hour-long conversation will conclude with an audience Q&A, where attendees will have the opportunity to ask Poitras questions about her extraordinary new work. Don’t miss this chance to learn from Laura Poitras, an honoree of the Academy, BAFTA, DGA, Emmy, Peabody, and Independent Spirit Awards.
If you would benefit from an accommodation to fully participate in this event, please complete this form, contact us at (435) 776-7790, or email us at accessibility@sundance.org to discuss your specific requests. Every effort will be made to accommodate advance requests; however, requests made within 5 days of the event may not be guaranteed.
The business day after the live event, all registered attendees will receive an email with a link to a recording of the session that can be watched for two business days after it is posted. After that, on-demand access to the recording can be purchased for $10.
