The nearly two-hour film "Citizenfour" by Laura Poitras paints an intimate portrait of Snowden holed up in a Hong Kong hotel as he blows the whistle on National Security Agency dealings and then plots his escape.
The film says Snowden's long-time partner Lindsay Mills joined him in Moscow in July. A short segment shows her preparing dinner with Snowden in a wood-paneled kitchen, but the couple's conversation is not recorded and she is not interviewed.
"It's a tough situation," he says, close to tears on the bed in his hotel room of telling Mills that he "may not be coming back."
"She has no idea (what I'm doing)," he says.
He says he feels "badly" about simply disappearing while she was on vacation but said he did it to protect her.