Artist
Laura Poitras
Via New York, NY, USA
Since 2006, filmmaker Laura Poitras has been detained at the U.S. border over 40 times. Her belongings, including her laptop, notebooks and cell phone, have been seized and searched by U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security while she has withstood extended interrogations– unusual treatment of an Oscar-nominated American documentary filmmaker. Laura Poitras’s films, which document the dramatic shift in American domestic and foreign policy towards increased surveillance following the attacks of September 11th, have earned her equal attention from award panels and the U.S. federal government. Her 2003 film Flag Wars was the recipient of the Peabody Award and won the “Best Documentary” title at that year’s South by Southwest Film Festival. My Country, My Country (2006) was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and The Oath (2010) won highest honors at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The filmmaker was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial. She continues to work on the third installment of her documentary trilogy about the War on Terror. Poitras was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012.
