Cybersecurity films, reviewed honestly.

Michael Mann's stylized cyber-thriller in which an imprisoned hacker is released to track an attacker who has caused a Hong Kong nuclear-plant overheat. Underrated by critics on release and now a cult favorite for its unusual technical seriousness.

Laura Poitras' first-person documentary of meeting Edward Snowden in Hong Kong as he leaks the NSA mass-surveillance archives, filmed in real time as the operation unfolds.

Alex Winter's documentary on the Silk Road takedown and the Ross Ulbricht trial, with interviews from Wired's Andy Greenberg and others close to the case. Narrated by Keanu Reeves.

Alex Winter's documentary on Napster — Sean Parker, Shawn Fanning, the file-sharing wave that broke the music industry — with primary-source interviews and a clear-eyed account of what came next.

A stylized 1995 portrait of a NYC hacker scene caught in a corporate-extortion plot. Aesthetic and zeitgeist piece more than technical reference, but a foundational artefact of how the public imagined hackers.

Ardizzone, Michaels, and Teale's HBO documentary on US election security through Finnish hacker Harri Hursti's vendor-by-vendor demonstration of how voting machines actually fail.

Werner Herzog's idiosyncratic documentary on what the internet has become: chapters on origins, online culture, the dark side, AI, the future of the species — each told as Herzog tells everything, with restless curiosity and zero pretense.

Independent Franco-German documentary by Marc Meillassoux and Mihaela Gladovic. Dismantles the 'I have nothing to hide' argument via a 30-day voluntary surveillance experiment on an ordinary subject.

Brian Knappenberger's hour-long documentary precursor to The Internet's Own Boy, exploring the open-source-software movement and the personalities (Stallman, Torvalds, ESR, the cypherpunks) who made it.

Laura Poitras's follow-up to Citizenfour, filmed inside the WikiLeaks orbit from 2011 through Assange's London embassy years, with extensive access to Sarah Harrison, Jacob Appelbaum, and Assange himself.

A pentesting crew is blackmailed into stealing a black box that breaks every cryptographic system in use. Tradecraft is dated but the framing of an offensive consulting team holds up.

Oliver Stone's dramatization of Edward Snowden's path from CIA contractor to NSA whistleblower, paired companion to Citizenfour from the dramatic-fiction side.