Snowden film 'CitizenFour' wins top documentary award

Director Laura Poitras poses at the International Documentary Association's 2014 IDA Documentary Awards in Los Angeles.

CitizenFour , filmmaker Laura Poitras's documentary about National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, was given the top award for best feature by the International Documentary Association on Friday.

The IDA award for CitizenFour follows the film's best documentary win at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards this week. It was also nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in November and is among 15 films advancing in the Oscars best documentary race.

CitizenFour gives a fly-on-the-wall account of Mr. Snowden's tense days in a Hong Kong hotel and encounters with journalists as newspapers published details of NSA programs that gathered data from the Internet activities and phone records of millions of Americans and dozens of world leaders.

Ms. Poitras shared a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for her role in publicising the Snowden documents.

Cable network Showtime's Time of Death was named best limited series, while best short documentary went to HBO Films' Tashi and the Monk , about a Buddhist monk and his 5-year-old charge Tashi.