Hot off dropping three documentaries last year — "Going Clear: Scientology And The Prison Of Belief," "Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine," and "Frank Sinatra: All Or Nothing" — director Alex Gibney kicks off the year with another one, "Zero Day," which doesn’t need a snappy subtitle to sell its chilling premise.
READ MORE: Berlin Review: Alex Gibney’s Chilling Cyber-Espionage Documentary ‘Zero Day’
Rather, the trailer does it all by itself, with Gibney’s latest work diving into the Stuxnet virus, and the frightening implications it could have on our day-to-day life, the secrecy that surrounds it, and the deadly impact that it’s already making. Here’s the official synopsis:
In his new film, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney explores the phenomenon of Stuxnet, a self-replicating computer virus discovered in 2010 by international IT experts. Evidently commissioned by the US and Israeli governments, this malware was designed to specifically sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme. However, the complex computer worm ended up not only infecting its intended target but also spreading uncontrollably. Although to this day officially denied, Stuxnet was created by two allied forces who were each pursuing their own agendas, and in doing so opened up the Pandora’s box of cyber warfare…
In Gibney’s film, insiders chronicle the development of a programme code-named ‘Olympic Games’ – a malware which can paralyse the infrastructure of entire states in a split second without leaving any trace of those responsible. This story of a source code that caused severe damage outside cyberspace becomes a cautionary tale about the dangers of unfettered technologies and uncontrolled political power.
Get ready to be "very, very paranoid" after watching the film, Jessica Kiang wrote in her review. Watch the trailer below. [THR]