Film

The Feeling of Being Watched

Assia Boundaoui investigates decades of FBI surveillance targeting her Arab-American Chicago neighborhood. This is intimate documentary filmmaking about institutional suspicion, where personal reporting collides with government secrecy and the texture of paranoia becomes oddly clarifying. Essential for anyone reckoning with how surveillance reshapes community trust.

If you liked this

Citizenfour2014

Laura Poitras's account of Edward Snowden's NSA revelations shares the same urgent tone: a person with documents exposing vast, hidden government programs that reframe everything you thought was private.

But Snowden's story can feel abstract and global; this one is more grounded in a single person's choices, which some find less cinematically dynamic.

Citizenfour poster

The Big Scary “S” Word2020

A sharp, accessible documentary about surveillance capitalism and data collection. It shares Boundaoui's focus on how systems designed at a distance reshape ordinary lives in tangible, frightening ways.

But Less personal than this film—it's systemic rather than narrative-driven, so it can feel more like a briefing than a story.

The Big Scary “S” Word poster

Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections2020

A tense, tightly constructed account of voter suppression as a systematic government failure. Same sense of hidden infrastructure quietly harming people who should be protected.

But More narrowly focused on one policy; lacks the personal anchor that makes Boundaoui's film so affecting.

Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America's Elections poster

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Possessed2015

Both examine how authority exercises control over a population through mechanisms that operate below visibility, reshaping daily life and trust.

An Israeli documentary about military possession of Palestinian land. Like Boundaoui's film, it's about invisible power: how a place can be claimed, controlled, and defined by forces its inhabitants don't consent to. Gorgeous, disquieting, operating at that intersection of the personal and the political.

But It's a different conflict with a different moral landscape; the analogy to surveillance is metaphorical rather than literal, which might feel like a reach.

Possessed poster
More like this (3)

Risk2017

Poitras again, this time tracking Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. It captures that same paranoia-tinged atmosphere where you're never quite sure who's watching whom.

But Assange is a more divisive figure than Boundaoui; your feelings about him will color how you receive the film.

Risk poster

All the President's Men1976

The granddaddy of investigation narratives: reporters piecing together hidden government wrongdoing through shoe-leather work and source cultivation. Pure-blood ancestor of what Boundaoui does.

But Four decades old and paced like a thriller rather than a documentary; the style feels distant from contemporary work.

All the President's Men poster

The Whole Truth

A documentary legal thriller about fighting government opacity through the courts. Similar frustration with institutions that refuse to show their work, similar stakes around justice.

But Less emotionally resonant than Boundaoui's neighborhood focus; it can feel more procedural than human.

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