Cover-Up (2025)
12-month trend
12-month trend
Monthly article views
2025-09 to 2026-08
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist reluctantly opens his archives to reveal decades of secret U.S. war crimes and domestic spying.
The story
American journalist Seymour Hersh reluctantly agrees to discuss his career, providing unprecedented access to his body of work. The film follows the exposure of U.S. war crimes during the Vietnam War and the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia; the Watergate scandal; the CIA's program of domestic spying; and the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib during the U.S. war on terror. It incorporates archival audio recordings, including White House tapes of Richard Nixon discussing Hersh with Henry Kissinger.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
American journalist Seymour Hersh reluctantly agrees to discuss his career, providing unprecedented access to his body of work. The film follows the exposure of U.S. war crimes during the Vietnam War and the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia; the Watergate scandal; the CIA's program of domestic spying; and the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib during the U.S. war on terror. It incorporates archival audio recordings, including White House tapes of Richard Nixon discussing Hersh with Henry Kissinger. The documentary also addresses controversies in Hersh's career, including his 1997 book The Dark Side of Camelot, from which he removed a chapter based on letters later revealed to be forgeries.
- First release year
- 2025
- Runtime (minutes)
- 118
- Production countries
- United States
- Original languages
- English; Vietnamese; Arabic
- Directors
- Laura Poitras; Mark Obenhaus
- Cast and characters
- Seymour Hersh
- Genres
- documentary
- Themes
- investigative journalism; war crimes; government secrecy; domestic spying
- Tone and mood
- serious; investigative
- Premise and plot tags
- documentary; biography; political; historical
- Reception
- Metacritic assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
- Reported review scores
- Metacritic · score: 86 · scale: 100 · review count: 19; Metacritic · score: 86 · scale: 100 · review count: 19
- Production trivia
- The film was inspired by the tone of All The President's Men and The Parallax View.; The production team was granted access to an archive containing over 7,000 assets.; The film addresses a controversy regarding Hersh's 1997 book The Dark Side of Camelot.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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