''Zero Days'' is a 2016 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

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 '' ...

. It was selected to compete for the

Golden Bear The Golden Bear (german: Goldener Bär) is the highest prize awarded for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival. The bear is the heraldic animal of Berlin, featured on both the coat of arms and flag of Berlin. History The winn ...

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 Michael ...

Synopsis

''Zero Days'' covers the phenomenon surrounding the

Stuxnet Stuxnet is a malicious computer worm first uncovered in 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 responsible for causing su ...

computer virus and the development of the

malware Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...

software known as "

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

." It concludes with discussion over follow-up cyber plan

Nitro Zeus Nitro Zeus is the project name for a well funded comprehensive cyber attack plan created as a mitigation strategy after the Stuxnet malware campaign and its aftermath. Unlike Stuxnet, that was loaded onto a system after the design phase to affect ...

and the

Iran Nuclear Deal The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA; fa, برنامه جامع اقدام مشترک , barnāmeye jāme'e eqdāme moshtarak (, ''BARJAM'')), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal or Iran deal, is an agreement on the nuclear program ...

Interviewees

David E. Sanger David E. Sanger (born July 5, 1960) is an American journalist who is the chief Washington correspondent for ''The New York Times''. A 1982 graduate of Harvard College, Sanger has been writing for the ''Times'' for 30 years covering foreign policy, ...

*Emad Kiyaei, Director External Affairs at the

American Iranian Council The American Iranian Council (AIC) was formed in 1990 as a US-based bi-partisan think tank focused upon promoting better relations between the United States and Iran. Former United States Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was the original honorary C ...

(AIC), *Eric Chien ( Symantec) *Liam O'Murchu (Symantec) *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 integr ...

Gary Samore Gary Samore is the Crown Family Director of thCrown Center for Middle East Studiesand Professor of the Practice in Politics at Brandeis University. He formerly served as the Executive Director for Research of the Belfer Center for Science and Inte ...

Chris Inglis John Chris Inglis (born October 29, 1954), also known as Chris Inglis, is an American government official who served as the first National Cyber Director. Inglis is also a former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency. On April 12, 2021 ...

, NSA Deputy Director 2006-2014 *

Amos Yadlin Aluf (Major General, res.) Amos Yadlin ( he, עמוס ידלין; born 20 November 1951) is a former general in the Israeli Air Force (IAF), Israel Defense Forces military attaché to Washington, D.C. and head of the IDF Military Intelligence Di ...

Yossi Melman Yossi Melman (Hebrew: יוסי מלמן, 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 ...

Yuval Steinitz Yuval Steinitz ( he, יוּבַל שְׁטַיְינִיץ; born 10 April 1958) is an Israeli politician who currently serves as a member of the Knesset for the Likud party. He also held several ministerial posts, including Minister of Finance, ...

Eugene Kaspersky Yevgeny Valentinovich Kaspersky (Russian: Евгений Валентинович Касперский; 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-found ...

Vitaly Kamluk Vitali, Vitalii, Vitaly, Vitaliy and may refer to: People Given name * Vitaly Borker (born 1975 or 1976), Ukrainian American Internet fraudster and cyberbully * Vitaly Churkin (1952–2017), Russian politician * Vitaly Ginzburg (1916–2009), Russ ...

* Michael Hayden *

Olli Heinonen Olli Heinonen (born in Finland) is Senior Advisor on Science and Nonproliferation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and an associate of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Previously, he was ...

*Ralph Langner, German control system security consultant * Richard A. Clarke *

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen Rolf is a male given name and a surname. It originates in the Germanic name ''Hrolf'', itself a contraction of ''Hrodwulf'' ( Rudolf), a conjunction of the stem words ''hrod'' ("renown") + ''wulf'' ("wolf"). The Old Norse cognate is ''Hrólfr''. ...

*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 or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...

Director of Cybersecurity 2008-2011 *Sergey Ulasen (

Kaspersky Lab Kaspersky Lab (; Russian: Лаборатория Касперского, tr. ''Laboratoriya Kasperskogo'') is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and operated by a holding company in th ...

Belarus)

Reception

Review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American 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, and Stephen Wang ...

collected 66 reviews as of May 6, 2017, of which 91% were positive. The site's consensus states: "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."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

gave the film a score of 77/100 based on 23 critics. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Godfrey Cheshire praised ''Zero Days'' 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 15 films shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, but ultimately did not receive an Oscar nomination. The film won a documentary film

Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...

in 2017 and was nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay from the

Writers Guild of America The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers: * The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO * The Writers Guil ...

Release

''Zero Days'' was released digitally on Amazon Video and iTunes on December 6, 2016, broadcast on

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

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