Zero Days
Even the most jaded cyber security experts were shocked by the complexity they discerned in the virus that infected Iran’s nuclear program. The densely coded malware they dubbed Stuxnet was designed to thwart Iran, but knowledge of it fell into the hands of Iranian, Russian, Chinese and other actors on the world stage.
Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney interviewed everyone from Israeli journalists to Russian cyber experts and ex-NSA director Michael Hayden. He finds that the Stuxnet program was initiated under Bush and continued under Obama but was mutated by Israeli intelligence into something more virulent than intended. As an Israeli general explains, war is no longer conducted only by land, sea and air, but also in the “fourth dimension” of cyberspace. Zero Days touches on issues of international law, the lack of public debate over cyber warfare and the vulnerability of everything—including the electrical grid—in our wired world.
Long Way North
In this gorgeously colored animated feature, French director Rémi Chayé tells the story of Sasha, a plucky girl from imperial Russia who goes in search of her beloved grandfather, a lost arctic explorer. Evoking the great age of exploration, when men set out in steamships to find the poles, Long Way North follows the brave girl’s odyssey from St. Petersburg into the frigid ice. The film is focused on human (and animal) characters, not technical flash.
The Internecine Project
James Coburn stars as a Harvard free-market economics professor about to be appointed adviser to the U.S. president—but first he must tie up loose ends from his involvement in transnational corruption. Unblinking before the abyss of amorality, he orchestrates the murder of people who know too much by arranging for them to kill each other. Paranoid and slightly preposterous, this 1974 political thriller is crisply edited, visually interesting and scored with inventively tense music.
