Film
Zero Days
Alex Gibney's tense, meticulously reported documentary treats a computer virus like a geopolitical thriller, tracing how Stuxnet was built to quietly sabotage Iran's nuclear centrifuges — then got loose and started replicating everywhere. Told through anonymous intelligence sources, animated code, and unusually candid officials, it's for anyone who wants their espionage true, their stakes global, and their villains disturbingly competent.
If you liked this
Citizenfour2014
The definitive real-time document of a whistleblower's fear and courage, Laura Poitras filming Edward Snowden mid-collapse of his old life, capturing the same chilling sense that invisible systems are watching everyone.
But Its slow, claustrophobic hotel-room pacing rewards patience more than tension, and its focus is narrower than Zero Days' geopolitical sweep.

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks2013no page yet
Alex Gibney's own earlier dive into digital secrecy and state power, tracing Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning with the same forensic, morally uneasy curiosity that drives Zero Days.
But Assange's story has since curdled into something messier and more litigated, so parts feel dated or incomplete now.
Mr. Robot2015
A paranoid, stylish hacker drama that turns the anxieties Zero Days raises about surveillance and code-as-weapon into a gripping, increasingly surreal fiction with real teeth.
But It's a multi-season commitment with a mind-bending narrative structure some will find frustrating rather than thrilling.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb1964
Both are about weapons systems built to outthink their creators, and both ask what happens when human oversight becomes the weak link in the chain.
Kubrick's pitch-black satire imagines automated nuclear response systems slipping past human control decades before anyone coined the word 'cyberweapon,' treating as farce the exact nightmare Zero Days presents as sober fact.
But It's a comedy, and some will resist laughing at doomsday, even brilliant laughing, when the subject still feels this raw.

More like this (8)
The Great Hack2019
Another data-age documentary, this one following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, showing how invisible code can quietly reshape elections the way Stuxnet reshaped centrifuges.
But Its talking-head structure is less cinematic and urgent than Gibney's, and the stakes feel more diffuse.

Icarus2017
An investigative documentary that starts small and spirals into an actual state conspiracy, with the same slow-building dread of realizing you've stumbled onto something enormous and secret.
But Its subject is sport doping, not warfare, so the political stakes feel lower despite similar journalistic thrills.

Snowden2016
Oliver Stone's dramatization gives a human face and narrative shape to the surveillance-state fears Zero Days only gestures at through anonymous sources and pixelated interviews.
But It leans melodramatic where Zero Days stays clinical, and some will find its hero-worship a bit much.

The Imitation Game2014
Turing's codebreaking story is the ancestor of everything Zero Days is about: secret government tech projects, moral compromise, and the terrifying power of a very good idea.
But It's a much gentler, more sentimental biopic, with little of the reportorial urgency or contemporary dread.

The Social Dilemma2020
A jittery, alarmed look at how code we don't understand is already shaping our behavior, echoing Zero Days' fear that we've built machines outrunning oversight.
But Its dramatized reenactments and tech-bro talking heads feel gimmicky next to Zero Days' sober investigative rigor.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief2015
Gibney at his most patient and damning, peeling back institutional secrecy layer by layer, offering the same procedural pleasure of watching a hidden structure get exposed.
But The subject is religion, not warfare, so anyone here for geopolitics will find it a tonal detour.

Chernobyl2019
Stuxnet and the Chernobyl disaster both escaped their creators' control, and both stories turn on the gap between what officials admit and what actually happened.
A miniseries about an invisible, self-spreading catastrophe born of institutional secrecy and hubris, carrying the same dread that something set in motion cannot be called back once it's loose.
But It's fiction dramatizing real events with composite characters, so anyone wanting strict documentary fact should adjust expectations accordingly.

Zero Dark Thirty2012
Both interrogate covert operations run without public consent, trading Zero Days' journalistic caution for a filmmaker's dramatic license on the same moral territory.
A tense, morally murky thriller built around a real, years-long covert American operation, capturing the same queasy fascination with secret state violence justified as necessary and unavoidable.
But It dramatizes torture and manhunts rather than malware, and its fictionalized version of events has been publicly disputed by participants.

People
Cast
Yossi MelmanSelf- Ralph LangnerSelf
- Emad KiyaeiSelf
- Eric ChienSelf
- Liam O'MurchuSelf
George W. BushSelf (archive footage)
Hillary ClintonSelf (archive footage)
Mikhail GorbachevSelf (archive footage)
Ronald ReaganSelf (archive footage)
Mahmoud AhmadinejadSelf (archive footage)
Abdul Qadeer KhanSelf (archive footage)
Directing
- Alex GibneyDirector
Writing
- Alex GibneyWriter
Production
- Allison EstrinCasting
- Henry Russell BergsteinCasting
- Alex GibneyProducer
- Marc ShmugerProducer
- Olga KuchmenkoProducer
- Bethany DettmoreResearcher
- Charlotte KaufmanResearcher
- Henrik MoltkeResearcher
- Julie Begey SeureauResearcher
- Orit Fouks RotemResearcher
Recommended by
The Great Hack, Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, City of Ghosts, Coded Bias, Sneakers