Trailer
Plot summary
Two years after the September 11 attacks, CIA analyst Maya arrives at a black site where Dan is questioning Ammar, a detainee tied to the financing of the attacks. Maya takes part in the sessions, uneasy with the methods used. The questioning yields a name: Abu Ahmed, a courier for al-Qaeda. Back with her colleagues, Jessica and station chief Joseph Bradley among them, Maya studies old interrogation tapes and leads, convinced the courier matters because so many people have heard of him. Bradley wants actionable intelligence he can turn into a strike, not a name. A prisoner in Poland describes a network used to pass messages, and Maya brings the report to Bradley.
In these lists: 2010s Movies on Netflix Right Now (US)
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal had finished a screenplay about the Battle of Tora Bora and were about to start filming when Osama bin Laden was killed, so they shelved it and started over from scratch.
- The production built a full-scale replica of the Abbottabad compound in Jordan, and production designer Jeremy Hindle, who had never made a feature film before, had the cinder blocks distressed so they would not look new.
- Parts of the film were shot in Chandigarh, India, where some areas were dressed to look like Lahore and Abbottabad, Pakistan; local members of right-wing parties protested the portrayal of Pakistani locations on Indian soil.
- For a single scene shot in Poland, the city of Gdańsk was reportedly offended at being depicted as a site for the CIA's clandestine and dark operations.
- National security expert Peter Bergen, who reviewed an early cut as an unpaid adviser, said the film's torture scenes were "overwrought"; screenwriter Mark Boal said they were "toned down" in the final cut.
- Paul N. J. Ottosson won the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing for Zero Dark Thirty, sharing the award with Skyfall. It was just the sixth tie in the history of the Academy Awards and the first one since 1994.
- The Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association gave Kathryn Bigelow its Best Director award, the second time the honor went to a woman; the first was also Bigelow, for The Hurt Locker.
- In June 2011, CIA Director Leon Panetta disclosed "Secret" and "Top Secret" information about the bin Laden raid personnel during a speech at CIA headquarters; screenwriter Mark Boal was among the roughly 1,300 people present, unknown to Panetta.
