Laura Poitras was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1964. She is a filmmaker, journalist, and artist. Citizen Four (2014) her third in a trilogy of films about post 9/11 America, won an Oscar for Best Documentary, as well as awards from BAFTA, the Independent Spirit Awards, and the Director’s Guild of America. Part one of the trilogy, My Country, My Country (2006), about the occupation of Iraq, was nominated for an Academy Award. Part two, The Oath (2010), on the Guantánamo Bay prison, was nominated for two Emmy awards. Poitras is also the recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Fellowship. She worked on a series of immersive installations for her first solo museum exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Poitras was a guest of the 2014 edition of the LEFFEST. The director came to present her movie CitizenFour and, in the process, met Nan Goldin who was part of the jury of that year's FEstival. As they both have stated in interviews this was the start of a friendship and collaboration that would result in the creation of Laura Poitras latest work All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022). The movie was the big winner of this year's Venice International Film Festival, taking home the Golden Lion prize.