The newly released image from Oliver Stone’s Snowden drama via Open Road Films gives audiences glimpse into the private and more light-hearted aspects of Edward Snowden‘s life. The image features Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception) as Snowden and Shailene Woodley as his girlfriend Lindsay Mills, strolling in front of the White House in Washington D.C. and presumably mid-conversation.
Snowden is the infamous NSA employee-turned-whistleblower who leaked numerous confidential documents exposing the Federal government’s practices of spying on its citizens. Last year saw the release of the documentary, Citizenfour, which chronicled the leak in real-time and won an Oscar for Best Documentary. Stone’s adaptation will be based off Luke Harding’s book The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, and Time of The Octopus, the upcoming novel by Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena. The film will dramatize both the events seen in Citizenfour as well as Snowden’s move from Hawaii to Hong Kong – where he handed over his files in a secret transaction with journalist Glenn Greenwald – and then to Russia where he sought asylum in Moscow.
This still is a follow-up to a militarized image of Snowden released last month. Comparatively, this latest look shows a lighter side and perhaps reveals the depth to which Stone’s film will go into Snowden’s life. Snowden’s girlfriend Mills, as he revealed in Citizenfour, was completely kept out of the loop regarding the NSA files, for her own safety. He also did not divulge to her his plans to leak any information whatsoever. The two were unable to see each other again until Snowden was safely granted asylum in Russia, where they now live together. Based on this knowledge, we can deduce from the above image that Snowden aims to tell a story unknown to the world as of yet, before the leak occurred.
Stone’s docudrama will also feature performances from a high-profile cast including Timothy Olyphant (TV’s Justified), Nicholas Cage (Joe), Scott Eastwood (Fury), Zachary Quinto (2009’s Star Trek), Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill), and Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton). Snowden is slated for U.S. release on December 25th of this year.
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