Five things about new biopic ‘Snowden’ from Oliver Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

“The government lies about it all the time and what they’re doing is illegal and they keep doing it”.

The firebrand director spoke to the assembled press ahead of the screening of Snowden this evening, and talked of his concerns of the all-pervasive surveillance we encounter every day.

“I was kind of trying to figure out why he did what he did, what was going on in his head”, he said.

“This is really a secret underworld and no one in the NSA has come forward in its 70-year history”, Stone said.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the US National Security Agency contractor who fled to Russian Federation in 2013 having revealed extensive internet and phone surveillance by US intelligence. “And it gets better and better, what they do, so this a very upsetting story”.

The docudrama thriller stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the former NSA analyst-turned-whistleblower, who shocked the world in 2013 with his revelations of the NSA’s mass electronic surveillance of foreign nations as well as USA citizens.

Gordon-Levitt, who achieved fame as a child actor in television series “3rd Rock from the Sun”, said that by playing Snowden, he hoped to understand his motivations.

Speaking to reporters at the premiere, Gordon-Levitt said: “In reading up on him and really learning about what he did and why he did it, I felt grateful for what he did and honoured I got to play him”.

“I completely respect anybody’s desire to sort of turn their life into a performance that way, if that’s their preferred form of expression”.

“I think he is someone of great integrity and great courage”.

The movie begins with a look at Snowden’s military past, where injuries to both legs led to his honourable discharge, and follows the world’s most prolific hacker to his eventual demise (or promise, depending on how you look at it). (This is) the most extensive, invasive surveillance state ever existed.