Laura Poitras, born on February 2, 1964, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States, and raised in Carlisle, Massachusetts, is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, visual artist, and journalist. She earned a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her early documentaries include 'Flag Wars' (2003) on gentrification in Columbus, Ohio; 'My Country, My Country' (2006), which examines the U.S. occupation of Iraq and earned an Oscar nomination; and 'The Oath' (2010) about Guantanamo detainees. She directed the Oscar-winning 'Citizenfour' (2014) about Edward Snowden. Between 2006 and 2012, Poitras was detained and interrogated over 40 times by U.S. Customs and Border Protection upon re-entering the country, placed on a secret no-fly list, and had her electronics seized, due to her investigative work on post-9/11 surveillance and counterterrorism policies; these experiences were documented in her installation 'ASTERISK' and film 'Risk' (2016). Poitras relocated to Berlin, Germany, in 2012 to escape ongoing harassment. She co-founded the nonprofit Praxis Films and the nonprofit journalism organization Field of Vision with Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. In 2013, she received a MacArthur Fellowship 'Genius Grant.' Her work extends to visual art, with exhibitions at the 2013 Whitney Biennial, the 2015 Venice Biennale, and the 2017 Documenta 14. Poitras has contributed to The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Intercept, focusing on national security and privacy issues.