Cover-Up

The documentary follows sixty years of Seymour Hersh's work as a reporter: breaking the My Lai massacre, writing up the CIA's domestic surveillance programme, documenting the torture at Abu Ghraib. Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus conduct long sessions with Hersh and set archive material between them, including White House recordings of Nixon and Kissinger discussing him. The film does not exalt the reporter; source protection, unverified claims and his contested recent pieces are all on the table. The subject is not one journalist but how institutional violence is covered up and how many years it takes to open it. It played at Venice in 2025 and was then acquired by Netflix. Who it is for: viewers who like the history of journalism and political documentary. Who it is not for: anyone avoiding archive footage of war crimes.