Cover-Up (2025 film)

Cover-Up is a 2025 American documentary film produced and directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus. It explores the investigative journalism career of Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered the U.S. Army torture scandals during the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.^[4]

The film had its world premiere out of competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2025.^[5] It had a limited theatrical release in the U.S. in December 19, prior to streaming globally on Netflix on December 26.

American journalist Seymour Hersh hesitantly agrees to sit down and discuss his career, providing unprecedented access to his body of work. The film follow the exposing 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 U.S. war on terror.

In 2004, Laura Poitras had the idea of making a documentary film following Seymour Hersh in real time as he met sources or in meetings at The New Yorker, however Hersh was against the idea as it would be risky for sources, and did not want to talk about himself. Despite this, Poitras and Hersh remained in touch over the years.^[6][7] Following the completion of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed Poitras reached out to Seymour who suggested she speak with Mark Obenhaus as Obenhaus and Hersh had been wanting to enter production on a film revolving around Hersh's reporting on the My Lai massacre, which struggled to find financing.^[8][9] Poitras and Obenhaus decided to collaborate, with Hersh allowing Obenhaus and Poitras alongside archival producers access to his archive, which amassed over 7,000 assets.^[10] Obenhaus and Poitras alongside producer Olivia Streisand spent three months creating a proof-of-concept for the film, and figuring out how to work together.^[11] All The President's Men and The Parallax View were among inspirations for the film's tone.^[12]

The film had its world premiere out of competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2025.^[13] It also screened at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival on August 30, and at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on September 10.^[14][15] It was also screened at the main slate of the 2025 New York Film Festival.^[16] It competed in Stockholm Documentary Competition of the 2025 Stockholm International Film Festival on November 5, 2025.^[17] On November 17, 2025, it was shown as the closing film at Glimmerglass Film Days, a film festival in Cooperstown, New York.^[18]

In September 2025, Netflix acquired distribution rights to the film planning a winter release.^[19] It is was theatrically released in the U.S on December 19, which will be followed by a global streaming release on December 26.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 37 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Cover-Up shines a light on Seymour Hersh's remarkable career and the pugnacious commitment it required, making for an absorbing and instructive treatise on journalistic responsibility."^[20] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 85 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[21]

• Cover-Up at IMDb