Venice Review: Cover-Up Is the Most Significant American Documentary of the Year

      Three years after Venice celebrated Laura Poitras’s documentary on artist and activist Nan Goldin, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, and awarded it the Golden Lion, another film by the Academy Award-winning director is now showcased at the Lido. Cover-Up, co-directed by Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, focuses on the legendary journalist Seymour (Sy) Hersh and his extensive career that stretches from the 1960s to today. A title card reveals that Poitras initially approached Hersh around 20 years ago, and after collaborating with Obenhaus on several documentaries, he has finally agreed to take part in what has become Cover-Up.

      Patience is a trait that both co-directors exhibit abundantly. This is evident in their past works—Citizenfour featured Edward Snowden, and The Oath focused on Guantanamo Bay prisoner Salim Hamdan and his brother-in-law Abu Jandal, who was Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard. Hersh’s hesitance to discuss himself critically or analytically is also apparent, along with his sensitivity to the identities of various sources, to which both Poitras and Obenhaus occasionally respond from off-screen. Their interjections provide reassurance but are also pointed—reminiscent of the journalist's own narrative style.

      Hersh has made significant contributions to US political journalism, covering topics such as chemical and biological weapons, the My Lai massacre and its subsequent cover-up during the Vietnam War, Watergate, the “Family Jewels,” the Gulf War, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, among others. The film features him narrating the timelines, sources, and editorial work related to these events. His interviews are complemented by those of peers and editors, alongside numerous scanned newspaper clippings. Additionally, Hersh’s personal archive of photographs, notebooks, maps, and highly confidential documents is presented in slideshows. Witnessing him recount these impactful stories many years after he initially documented them reveals a complex blend of arrogance and deep despair, reflecting a man so dedicated to uncovering the truth that he fails to recognize its toll on him over the years.

      Cover-Up is as comprehensive as one would expect from a documentary of its nature, summarizing Hersh’s accomplishments and the challenges he faced to publish them while allowing more recent, relevant events to infiltrate its narrative. In two significant instances, Hersh is filmed speaking on speakerphone with an anonymous source in Gaza, anchoring the film in present-day issues without making the correlation overly conspicuous. Cover-ups and the construction of denial and misinformation have become justifications for war, normalized by American politicians—a legacy that can be traced to Israel’s coordinated, violent attacks in Gaza. While the film doesn’t need to explicitly lay blame, its dedication to unveiling systemic injustice accomplishes that effectively. In this regard, Cover-Up could be considered the most significant American documentary of the year. Poitras and Obenhaus have crafted a documentary that also serves as a film-document: informative and even educational in how it allows the subject to recount stories he has already told, fully recognizing their role in shaping an alternative narrative of America’s political history, both past and present.

      It is also revealing that many of Hersh’s breakthroughs have been somewhat overshadowed in the media landscape: without making it explicit, the film challenges the notion of him being a journalistic savior or prophet; instead, he was simply more tenacious. Amid the darkness that permeates Cover-Up, there is also a notable amount of hope, and the film’s greatest strength lies in its subtlety. Poitras and Obenhaus are satisfied with letting Hersh speak as much as he feels at ease, even if that leads to him opting out of the entire project. Toward the film’s conclusion, he seemingly withdraws, yet a hint of optimism persists as long as he continues to talk: silence fosters oppression. Cover-Up may offer a quieter call to action, but it is, nonetheless, a call to action.

      Cover-Up made its debut at the 2025 Venice Film Festival.