Cover-Up (American premiere, in person: Laura Poitras, Seymour Hersh, Mark Obenhaus)

Laura Poitras & Mark Obenhaus: Cover-Up (2025). Seymour Hersh.

Jason Silverman (TFF 2025): "Seymour Hersh is the superhero of modern American investigative journalism. He’s spent decades on an energetic crusade to hold America’s powerful institutions accountable to the law. In the early 1970s, Hersh singlehandedly broke the story of a massacre by American troops at My Lai (his stories hastened the end of the Vietnam War). He provided crucial reporting on Watergate and uncovered evidence that the CIA was spying on political opponents. In the 1990s, he brought the story of torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison to the world. Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras (CITIZENFOUR) and Mark Obenhaus take us deeply into Hersh’s practice: building relationships, asking the right questions and fiercely following every lead. Hersh may be imperfect—the film touches upon a lapse of judgment with a tainted source—but he’s essential. Especially as the media are demonized as enemies of the people, and checks on power are routinely demolished." –JS (U.S., 2025, 117m) In person: Laura Poitras, Seymour Hersh, Mark Obenhaus

AA: Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus's Cover-Up is one of the greatest film portraits of a journalist. It is an authorized portrait of Seymour Hersh, ensuring the film-makers access to an archival trove of previously unknown to the public. And it must remain classified to a high degree to protect the sources who have risked much in revealing inflammatory truths. Such as the My Lai and Abu Ghraib scandals which shook the world.

Cover-Up is a portrait of an intellectual in the full sense of the word: a person who risks literally everything to speak truth to power. The paradigm is Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair, but all journalists pursuing the mission of truth about Gaza and the West Bank are followers of Émile Zola and Seymour Hersh.

Diving into Hersh's archives Poitras and Obenhaus also discover issues that are uncomfortable for the hero. Embarrassing moments are included.

A case that interests me is The Dark Side of Camelot, in which Hersh fell into the trap of believing in forged correspondence between John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. "Nobody is perfect".

But all Hersh's true feats are still valid, including his exposés of dark money and corruption on high levels. Film-relevant are his investigations about Gulf + Western and Charles Bluhdorn, going deep into the dark side of corporate America, including the fate of Paramount Pictures. I have not forgotten Francis Ford Coppola's irreverent dvd commentary to The Godfather and his memories of exchanges in the lifts of Paramount Pictures that sounded like dialogue by Mario Puzo.

Hersh, Poitras and Obenhaus warn us against getting too close to power.