Oscar® winning writer/director Alex Gibney’s revelatory CITIZEN K is an intimate yet sweeping look at post-Soviet Russia from the perspective of the enigmatic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned political dissident. Benefitting from the chaos that ensued after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Khodorkovsky was able to amass a fortune in financing and oil production and became the richest man in Russia. But when he accused the new Putin regime of corruption, Khodorkovsky was arrested, his assets were seized and following a series of show trials, he was sentenced to more than ten years in prison. Today, as an exile living in London, he continues to speak out against Putin’s two-decade stranglehold on power. Expertly researched and photographed, Gibney uses Khodorkovsky’s story as a way to explore the complex interplay between oligarchy and government and its destructive effect on democracy, in Russia and beyond.

Written & Directed by Alex Gibney // Produced by John Battsek, George Chignell, Erin Edeiken, Alex Gibney, and P.J. van Sandwijk. Not rated. Running time: 126 minutes. In English and Russian, with English subtitles.

Official selection: Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, London Film Festival.

ABOUT ALEX GIBNEY (writer / director / producer):

Called “the most important documentarian of our time” by Esquire Magazine, Alex Gibney has a signature cinematic style that lends itself to penetrating, gripping, and deeply insightful documentaries. His work has been the recipient of an Academy Award, multiple Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, several Peabody Awards, the DuPont-Columbia Award, The Independent Spirit Award and The Writers Guild Awards. In 2013, Alex was honored with the International Documentary Association’s (IDA) Career Achievement Award, in 2015 the inaugural Christopher Hitchens Prize, and the Robert J. Flaherty Award in 2019.

Some of Gibney’s notable films include the triple Emmy and Peabody award-winning GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF; the Academy Award-winning TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE, the Oscar-nominated ENRON THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM, the multiple Emmy Award-winning MEA MAXIMA CULPA; and the Peabody award-winning ZERO DAYS, NO STONE UNTURNED, which premiered at the New York Film Festival in September of 2017 and was nominated for the WGA Award for Best Documentary Screenplay and an Emmy award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary. His most recent film, THE INVENTOR: OUT FOR BLOOD IN SILICON VALLEY, was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Documentary.

Citizen K Advance Screening with Filmmaker Q&A