Journalist Seymour Hersh in 1975, as seen in the documentary “Cover-Up.”
(The New York Times)
When real-life political anxieties (or worse) infuse the atmosphere of a film festival, it’s hard to pretend that celebrating art is ever enough. “Cover-Up” was, for me, the antidote: a furious, hard-nosed profile of legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the man who broke the My Lai massacre in 1969, then went on to an impressive run of stories that included revelations about Watergate, the CIA and Abu Ghraib. Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”), co-directing with Mark Obenhaus, mainly tries to stay out of the way of Hersh’s ferocious forward momentum, capturing the writer’s method with a minimum of wasted words. “I’ve got every right to be here, buddy,” Hersh bats back to a displeased listener and you thrill to an era when breaking the news wasn’t chilled by caution. — Joshua Rothkopf