Beginning on Friday, January 2nd, Cinema Detroit (a.k.a. The Burton Theater, a.k.a. Cass City Cinema) has been screening Citizenfour, the Laura Poitras documentary that exhaustively documents the circumstances surrounding the notorious leak of National Security Agency documents and practices by NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Though it has been through a comedic number of name changes, Cinema Detroit remains a great in-city movie destination for indie documentaries, comedies and horror flicks.

Over the course of the documentary, Snowden contacts various journalists, including Poitras and Glenn Greenwald—who risked their own professional and personal sanctity in bringing his revelations to light—and establishes a secure rendezvous in a Hong Kong hotel. Though the on-screen action is relatively static (at least a few moviegoers in the unusually packed house bailed before the end credits), the revelations regarding the widespread monitoring of communications by the U.S. government are chilling.

Snowden is now famous for leaking the documents that reveal breaches of privacy that went far beyond the public understanding of governmental surveillance.

To those with a healthy sense of paranoia, the idea that all major telecommunications providers have been complicit in the release of their personal communications for surveillance by the government may come merely as grim confirmation of scenario that reads like something out of George Orwell’s “1984.” For others, the facts as Snowden presents them—and he appears to have risked a great deal with little to gain for his efforts—may be jaw-dropping in the breach of privacy they represent. Either way, the documentary drew a great deal of interest, and above-average crowds in its opening weekend. Its run ended on Thursday, January 8th.

Citizenfour raises issues of privacy that are timely in climate of constant social media—arguably a form of self-surveillance—and one being explored in recent works of fiction like “The Circle” by Dave Eggers. Ultimately, as we jump from the fictionalized worldview to a documented one, Citizenfour leaves us with a great deal to consider about the lines between public and private, and—with the astonishing claim that more than a million Americans are on the NSA watchlist (that’s approximately 1 in 300)—how much our national ideal of freedom has been reduced to an illusion.

Cinema Detroit: 3420 Cass Ave., Detroit; 313-281-8301; www.casscitycinema.com