Magical Mystery Media

Hypernormalisation is a nearly three-hour epic that leaps from subject to subject in a circuitous journey toward revelation. The film paints a vivid portrait of corporate control and increasing social insularity as it tries to make sense of our modern world’s pervasive anxiety and uncertainty.

In filmmaker Adam Curtis’s world, we are minds in the matrix, doomed to feed the machine with our bodies and souls.

In 2013, Edward Snowden reached out to filmmaker Laura Poitras because of her history of uncompromising documentary filmmaking. He knew she had long been a target of government surveillance and was confident she would not be easily intimidated.

Citizenfour (Snowden’s handle in his secret correspondences with Poitras) places us in a Hong Kong hotel room with Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald as the young whistleblower shares knowledge and evidence of illegal mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA).

“Two friends step into a crop circle. One emerges unaffected. The other decides to build a UFO with the help of an eccentric transsexual inventor.”

If that’s not the greatest pitch ever we don’t know what is.