''Zero Days'' is a 2016 American

documentary film A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

directed by

Alex Gibney Philip Alexander Gibney (; born October 23, 1953) is an American documentary film director and producer. In 2010, ''Esquire'' magazine said Gibney "is becoming the most important documentarian of our time." Gibney's works as director include ''T ...

. It was selected to compete for the

Golden Bear The Golden Bear () is the highest prize awarded for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival and is, along with the Palme d'Or and the Golden Lion, the most important international film festival award. The bear is the heraldic an ...

at the

66th Berlin International Film Festival The 66th Berlin International Film Festival was held from 11 to 21 February 2016, with American actress Meryl Streep as the president of the jury. The Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement was presented to German cinematographer Michae ...

Synopsis

Although the entire subject is still shrouded in secrecy, the film attempts to tell the story of the development, deployment, discovery, and investigation of the

Stuxnet Stuxnet is a Malware, malicious computer worm first uncovered on June 17, 2010, and thought to have been in development since at least 2005. Stuxnet targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and is believed to be responsibl ...

computer virus and the

malware Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...

software known as "

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games (Olympics; ) are the world's preeminent international Olympic sports, sporting events. They feature summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a Multi-s ...

" in as much detail, and as accurately, as possible. It concludes with a discussion of the follow-up cyber plan " Nitro Zeus", and the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal.

Interviewees

* David E. Sanger *Emad Kiyaei, Director of External Affairs at the American Iranian Council (AIC) *Eric Chien, Symantec security response *Liam O'Murchu, Symantec security response *Colonel Gary D. Brown, staff judge advocate of the

United States Cyber Command United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the United States Department of Defense (DoD). It unifies the direction of cyberspace operations, strengthens DoD cyberspace capabilities, and integra ...

* Gary Samore * Chris Inglis * Amos Yadlin *

Yossi Melman Yossi Melman (; born December 27, 1950) is an Israeli writer and journalist. He was an intelligence and strategic affairs correspondent for the ''Haaretz'' newspaper, and in 2013 he joined ''The Jerusalem Post'' and its Hebrew sister paper ''Maari ...

* Yuval Steinitz *

Eugene Kaspersky Yevgeny Valentinovich Kaspersky (; born 4 October 1965) is a Russian cybersecurity expert and the CEO of Kaspersky Lab, an IT security company with 4,000 employees. He co-founded Kaspersky Lab in 1997 and helped identify instances of government-s ...

*Vitaly Kamluk,

Kaspersky Lab Kaspersky Lab (; ) is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, Natalya Kaspersky a ...

* Michael Hayden * Olli Heinonen *Ralph Langner, control systems security consultant * Richard A. Clarke *Rolf Mowatt-Larssen,

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

Officer (1982–2005) *Seán Paul McGurk,

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior, home, or public security ministries in other countries. Its missions invol ...

Director of Cybersecurity (2008–2011) *Sergey Ulasen, Kaspersky Lab Belarus

Release

''Zero Days'' was released digitally on

Amazon Prime Video Amazon Prime Video, known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming television service owned by Amazon. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced or co-produced by ...

and

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

on December 6, 2016, broadcast in the UK on

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

in the '' Storyville'' strand on January 16, 2017, and released on DVD on January 17, 2017.

Reception

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, 90% of 73 critics' reviews of the film are positive, with an average rating of 7.3/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Factors beyond Gibney's control prevent ''Zero Days'' from offering a comprehensive look at its subject, but the partial picture that emerges remains as frightening as it is impossible to ignore." On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film has a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score of 77 out of 100 based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Godfrey Cheshire praised the film as "Easily the most important film anyone has released this year, it is a documentary that deserves to be seen by every sentient citizen of this country—and indeed the world."

Accolades

''Zero Days'' was among the 15 films shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature at the

89th Academy Awards The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best 2016 in film, films of 2016, and took place on February 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, Californ ...

, but it was not chosen as one of the final five nominees in the category. It was nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay at the 69th Writers Guild of America Awards. The film won a

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Foster Peabody, George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and in ...

in 2017.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Zero Days 2016 films 2016 documentary films American documentary films 2010s English-language films Films directed by Alex Gibney Documentary films about cyberwarfare Cyberattacks on energy sector Cyberwarfare in Iran Documentary films about Iran Nuclear program of Iran Peabody Award–winning broadcasts Works about computer hacking 2010s American films English-language documentary films