Zero Dark Thirty (2012) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011. Director: a list of 39 titles created 04 Jan 2013 a list of 27 titles created 11 Jan 2013 a list of 26 titles created 11 Nov 2013 a list of 44 titles created 19 Jan 2014 a list of 24 titles created 14 Feb 2015 Title: Zero Dark Thirty (2012) 7.4/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 1 Oscar. Another 84 wins & 167 nominations. See more awards » Videos During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work. Director: Kathryn Bigelow Acting under the cover of a Hollywood producer scouting a location for a science fiction film, a CIA agent launches a dangerous operation to rescue six Americans in Tehran during the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran in 1980. Director: Ben Affleck 160 elite U.S. soldiers drop into Somalia to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord and find themselves in a desperate battle with a large force of heavily-armed Somalis. Director: Ridley Scott 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.3/10 X Navy S.E.A.L. sniper Chris Kyle's pinpoint accuracy saves countless lives on the battlefield and turns him into a legend.

Back home to his wife and kids after four tours of duty, however, Chris finds that it is the war he can't leave behind. Director: Clint Eastwood 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.6/10 X Marcus Luttrell and his team set out on a mission to capture or kill notorious Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, in late June 2005. Marcus and his team are left to fight for their lives in one of the most valiant efforts of modern warfare. Director: Peter Berg The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years. Director: Paul Greengrass As the Civil War continues to rage, America's president struggles with continuing carnage on the battlefield as he fights with many inside his own cabinet on the decision to emancipate the slaves. Director: Steven Spielberg Edit Storyline Maya is a CIA operative whose first experience is in the interrogation of prisoners following the Al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. on the 11th September 2001.

She is a reluctant participant in extreme duress applied to the detainees, but believes that the truth may only be obtained through such tactics. For several years, she is single-minded in her pursuit of leads to uncover the whereabouts of Al Qaeda's leader, Osama Bin Laden. Finally, in 2011, it appears that her work will pay off, and a U.S. Navy SEAL team is sent to kill or capture Bin Laden. But only Maya is confident Bin Laden is where she says he is. Written by Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net> The greatest manhunt in history. See more » Genres: Rated R for strong violence including brutal disturbing images, and for language | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 11 January 2013 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Kill Bin Laden See more » Filming Locations: $417,150 (USA) (21 December 2012) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia Jessica Chastain took all the photos from the suspects everyday after work and watched them on her wall, because she thought that was something Maya would do.

See more » Goofs The QRF helicopter in which the SEALs are extracted is shown to be a single, MH-6OK Black Hawk when in fact the QRF consisted of three Chinook helicopters from the 160th SOAR. Most likely MH-47e. See more » Quotes See more » Crazy Credits The filmmakers wish to especially acknowledge the sacrifice of those men, women, and families who were most impacted by the events depicted in this film: the victims and the families of the 9/11 attacks; as well as the attacks in the United Kingdom; the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan; in Khobar, Saudi Arabia; and at the Camp Chapman Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan. We also wish to acknowledge and honor the many extraordinary military and intelligence professionals and first responders who have made the ultimate sacrifice. See more » Connections (Washington, D.C.) – See all my reviews I've seen all the reasons viewers (and some critics) dislike this film, but in my opinion it is infinitely superior to ARGO in its authenticity and dramatic quality. The final scenes, when the SEAL team, goes into Ben Laden's house, are brilliantly rendered.

The idea of doing it mostly in the dark with flashes of illumination by "night vision" green is a brilliant touch, which most directors would never have attempted. The performances by Jessica Chastain, of course, Jason Clark and Jennifer Ehle are top drawer and the torture scenes, while brutal, are necessary--because that's the way it happened. Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal for getting it right. I don't want to put the knock on Argo, because I found it entertaining. But it's artificiality provides a distinct contrast with Zero Dark Thirity's authenticity, and authenticity wins. 50 of 92 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Kathryn Bigelow, Jessica Chastain and Mark Boal on Zero Dark Thirty - CraveOnline CraveOnline Here are the strangest sex fetishes that don't even make it onto your favorite porn site. Kathryn Bigelow, Jessica Chastain and Mark Boal on Zero Dark Thirty The director, star and screenwriter of the award-winning film talk about their movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

by Fred Topel Dec 19th, 2012 The stars and filmmakers of Zero Dark Thirty are in pretty high demand as the year wraps up and they sit at or near the top of the holiday movie season. We got to attend the press conference director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and stars Jessica Chastain and Jason Clarke gave in Los Angeles. Since we got to speak with Clarke one-on-one , we highlighted the comments of Chastain, Bigelow and Boal here. Chastain plays Maya, the CIA agent whose 10-year investigation leads to the SEAL Team Six operation against Osama bin Laden. CraveOnline: It must be very gratifying to become Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow and have everyone anticipate your next movie and assume it’s going to be good. Is a part of you feeling like, “Hello, where were you for K-19 and Strange Days and The Weight of Water?” Kathryn Bigelow: No, I’m just so gratified. Obviously, The Hurt Locker received a certain amount of attention and I’m so honored by that. It was both a very surprising experience, but also again just so gratifying.

Mark Boal confirms the dialogue in the film was invented by him, including the “motherf***er” line. Mark Boal: All the characters in the movie are based on real people, but the dialogue is written because it’s a screenplay and I’m compressing ten years into two hours. I took the information people gave me and had to reconstruct things to tell a story. Kathryn Bigelow on military cooperation. Kathryn Bigelow: The DOD [Department of Defense] didn’t vet the screenplay. Had we gone down that road, there might have been a lot more assets available to us. It was a very smart decision on Mark’s part to work off his material and to not have that extra layer imposed on him. Kathryn Bigelow on crafting a drama from a well-known story. Kathryn Bigelow: Well certainly it doesn’t lend itself to spoilers. I think what was so strong and what struck me so much about the screenplay was how inherently dramatic the story is and was and that ten year journey was.

It was a very riveting, galvanizing story that gave us a real glimpse into the intelligence hunt on the ground through the eyes of the characters that Jessica and Jason [Clarke] play of what it would be like to hunt the world’s most dangerous man, the dedication, the courage, the sacrifice and the price that they paid both personally and then some of their colleagues who did not survive. It was inherently a very dramatic piece. The fact that you knew the ending only amplified the drama. Jessica Chastain on her preparations for the role of Maya. Jessica Chastain: I had three months before we started shooting that I went to school for it, I guess. I nicknamed Mark “the professor,” and I would sit with him and go through the screenplay and ask a lot of questions about the character I was playing and about the CIA. I did some reading. I found two books that were particularly helpful, The Looming Tower[by Lawrence Wright] and Michael Scheuer’s book on Osama bin Laden [Osama bin Laden]. But, I was never able to meet the real woman it’s based on because she’s an undercover agent. I had to use my imagination to fill in the blanks where the research couldn’t answer the questions.

So, instead of going, “OK, Jessica Chastain as CIA agent, this is what I would do,” I tried to answer why she was recruited out of school. There’s a child’s drawing in Pakistan, American candy, certain things that would be reminders of the life that she was becoming a stranger to, I had to create on my own, but still stay faithful to the woman I’m portraying. Kathryn Bigelow on the male dominated cultures of Hollywood and the CIA. Kathryn Bigelow: I have to say that if that character at the center of that hunt had been a man, I would have been very happy and eager to engage in that story as well. I think what was important to me was that this was a very strong character at the center of this hunt and that the movie doesn’t engage necessarily in gender politics about that character. She is not defined by a man. She is not defined by a love interest. She is defined by her actions. I think that’s a character that’s very inspiring and is beautifully played by Jessica. So it was exciting to me. I will say that I was surprised and excited that it was a woman.

I was thrilled that it was a woman and to find out that there were women at the center of this hunt, but there were also a lot of men who worked very, very hard as well. It was a very wonderful screenplay so I was very happy. Mark Boal on the nature of enhanced interrogation techniques in Zero Dark Thirty. Mark Boal: First of all, I think that it’s a gross misrepresentation of the film to suggest that it shows that this intelligence operation coming down to any single piece of information. I understand those scenes are graphic and unsparing and unsentimental, but I think what the film does over the course of more than two hours is show the complexity of the debate and the number of different ways that information came into the CIA, including in that particular scene. It shows that torture didn’t stop the attack that the characters are worried about and that the information that Jessica and Jason’s characters hear about occurs over a relatively civilized, with emphasis on relatively civilized, context of a hummus and tabouli lunch. The film was a political chew toy before I even wrote a word, and I think that will unfortunately continue and people will bring what they want to see.

Our intention was to show the complexity of this debate which is fairly complicated and hopefully have people judge for themselves, but there does appear to be a mischaracterization on that front. Jessica Chastain on keeping Zero Dark Thirty a secret. Jessica Chastain: I am the worst at keeping secrets. I am the kind of person that the second I buy someone a Christmas present, I tell them what I bought them. I don’t wait until Christmas. I’m not good at it. So when I was cast in this, I was so excited about this character of Maya. I found her to be really inspiring and the script was incredible. It was so eye opening, but I had to keep it a secret and there was a lot of press coming out and people were speculating that I was a Navy SEAL wife and all this stuff. I had to just really hold my tongue for a year. So I’m very excited that people are now seeing the film and they’re realizing it’s not a propaganda film and it doesn’t have an agenda. It just tries to show this moment in history as accurately as possible. Jessica Chastain pays respect to the real CIA agents who risked their lives for us.

Jessica Chastain: In regards to the difficult scenes that these people found themselves in, in playing the character I just had so much compassion for this woman who really sacrificed so much for this mission. In our film, she becomes a stranger to herself at the end of the film. I just loved her from the moment I read her, what Mark created. He took the dry facts of this manhunt, the greatest manhunt in history, and what he was able to do with the dry facts was to create this amazing arc and really put the light on the people who worked so hard that never get the acknowledgement for that. So I have an enormous amount of compassion for everything they dealt with. Jessica Chastain on the children’s drawings Maya keeps. Jessica Chastain: In my backstory that I created from my imagination for my character, it wasn’t her child, but it was some other part of a family. Jessica Chastain on being underestimated like Maya. Jessica Chastain: I have no idea how to answer that question. I think in the film and what was great in this screenplay is, at first glance of Maya, people would dismiss her because she appears to be younger than she is and everything about her that’s in the movie.

The only thing I can relate to with that is I remember when I was 7 or 8 years old saying, “I’m going to be an actress when I grew up, and everyone looked at me but [were] not listening to me.” You know, I’m not 17 years old. I’ve been working for a while. I went to Juilliard. I played a dead body on TV. I did a lot of theater day players. I guess that kind of determination and “Listen to me! Cast me!” probably connects to Maya. A follow-up on Jessica Chastain’s schooling. Jessica Chastain: In regards to school, I spent four years studying Shakespeare, iambic pentameter and all that. To be honest, this text was more difficult than that, because not only has Mark taken the facts of what happened, but he has also created a very subtle character arc within it, and you find the humanity within what he’s created. So Juilliard absolutely helped me when preparing to speak very complex language and it gave me the tools for the research I would need to do in order to be believable as a CIA agent. Kathryn Bigelow on how she and D.P.

Greig Fraser shot Zero Dark Thirty. Kathryn Bigelow: I had an extraordinarily talented crew and a cinematographer named Greig Fraser, also Jeremy Hindle, production designer, Paul Ottosson, sound designer, Alexander Desplat, composer, and both William Goldenberg and Dylan Tichenor for editors. I think it was very important to us and certainly from the script to really give the audience a sort of “you are there” feel to this piece. In other words, peel back the curtain of the intelligence hunt and get a glimpse of what it might be like to actually try to find a very sharp needle in a very big haystack, and to do it in a way that feels like it’s unfolding in real time in front of you, around you. You’re inside it, especially with the raid itself. Kathryn Bigelow on the SEAL Team Six raid. Kathryn Bigelow: The raid was the most challenging logistically, I think, because we had to shoot in low light conditions to replicate a moonless night and then no light conditions to use the night vision goggles, which were real night vision lenses that we adapted to our camera lenses and they only work in zero light conditions.

You have about 100 crew members and 22 SEALs traipsing around a pitch black, rubble strewn set which was kind of interesting. But again, the desire was to make it feel like you are there. I don’t mean a lot of subjective camera, but nonetheless a kind of sense that it feels real and that it’s unfolding around you in real time. Jessica Chastain on the finished film. Jessica Chastain: This was the first film I’ve ever done where I had no idea what it was going to look like when I finished. The experience of making the film was incredibly intense. There was a lot of guerilla-style filmmaking. We were always on our toes. We didn’t have a lot of time for things. There’s a lot of material to shoot very quickly in crowds. For example, the scene in the hallway with Kyle Chandler when I hand him his ass, that one in particular, when I saw it, I was really embarrassed watching it because I’ve never seen myself like that before.

I guess it’s almost like having gone through a 4-month blackout and then someone has videotaped it and you watch it and you go, “That’s what happened!” I saw it once three weeks ago, so it was really kind of shocking that feeling, and I haven’t seen it with an audience yet. I going to see it tonight for the first time with an audience. I’m really excited about that. Jessica Chastain on the evolution of Maya over 10 years Jessica Chastain: Yes, there is a very definite arc for Maya. But, the wonderful thing about her and actually the most difficult thing about her as an actor to play is she is someone who does not explain her subtext. She doesn’t take the time to say how she feels. She doesn’t sit down and have a drink with someone and talk about her feelings. She’s so haunted by this mission. A lot of the arc had to almost be mapped out before we even started shooting so much so that I found chapters in the script that were marked by different markers for her when something might change. Is she brushing her hair? What kind of effort does she put into herself when we see her? So we understand something about her before she even opens her mouth.

So much of Maya is told without her explaining it. It has to be seen in her appearance and in her eyes and how she’s relating to the other characters, and because of that, for me, it’s more difficult than a character like Celia Foote where you work on the voice, you change your body, you show up and you do a scene ten different ways, and you get to be open and big, and then just throw it to the wall and see what sticks. This is something you have to know what you’re doing before you show up. You can’t just make it up. Kathryn Bigelow on how much to show of bin Laden in the end. Kathryn Bigelow: Our thinking was this is about the people, the men and women on the ground in the workforce, who found this house and then therefore found this man. Ultimately, it’s not really about him as much as it’s about them. They humanized that hunt and humanized that journey. It’s their story. Kathryn Bigelow and Jessica Chastain on the Marriot Hotel explosion scene. Kathryn Bigelow: I had a great practical FX team. I had a great crew.

They make what I do easy, I think. We rigged a room like this. It took probably about two weeks. I found the location, and then we would rig the whole place so it was ready to go. And we had pulleys where people would be thrown across the floor on harnesses. Every single window was rigged to go. All the glass was replaced with a tempered glass so there was nothing dangerous in the set. With a lot of planning, you set it up and gratefully, with the actors, that was one take. They were just perfect, perfect, perfect, and that was intense. It was very intense. Jessica Chastain: I want to say something about filming that scene, because I’ve never done anything like that before. From all my friends who do the big action movies and stuff like that, they always talk about it like, “Oh, it just takes so long. It’s weeks and weeks. It takes forever. You can get so bored.” They had scheduled two days for that whole sequence and Kathryn did it all in one day. We actually finished early. I remember showing up and saying, “Okay.” It was incredible to be an actor on that set with everything that they had put in place.

For me, I didn’t feel like anyone was going to get hurt and I felt like there was no time to be wasted. It was fantastic. You can see now why, especially the raid, I watch the stuff that Kathryn puts together, and you can see why it’s so exciting, because being on that set, the organization and the focus was really intense. Jessica Chastain on spending time in Jordan. Jessica Chastain: [There was] a time that we went to a hotel restaurant in Amman which is a pretty liberal city, I think, and the waiter wouldn’t give me a menu. He gave the men menus at the table, so Jason ordered for me that day. For me, it’s difficult being in that kind of a situation. I felt invisible as a woman. I don’t like that. And any time anything like that happened, it was just another log to the Maya fire, of her feeling invisible, like no one would listen to her or talk to her. Jessica Chastain on some good times on location. Jessica Chastain: I loved Petra. It’s so amazing. I actually took one of the horse-drawn carriages. It was pretty crowded.

I went during the day, but on certain days, they do the candle lights so I did both. It’s incredible. I also went to visit the Taj Mahal. The light is so pink and pretty. We had a couple of days off when the production moved to London and I stopped at the Pyramids in Egypt. 'Zero Dark Thirty' spotlights efforts of CIA and SEALs, not President, to kill Osama Bin Laden | Fox News 'Zero Dark Thirty' spotlights efforts of CIA and SEALs, not President, to kill Osama Bin Laden Facebook 0 Twitter 0 Email Print ZERO DARK THIRTY. (2012) LOS ANGELES – If you thought "Hurt Locker" director Kathryn Bigelow’s highly-anticipated “Zero Dark Thirty,” centered on the hunt for and killing of Osama bin Laden, was going to be one big Obama lovefest, think again. “It is the story of finding a very sharp needle in a very large haystack. Once bin Laden escaped from Afghanistan, he fenced himself in with a byzantine network that took years and years to unravel,” Bigelow said. “(The script) tracks all the minute steps, in a way that’s dramatic yet ...

unsentimental, unsparing, and unsettling. This is a very raw account.” In stark contrast to the recent Harvey Weinstein-produced “SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden,” which aired just two days before the Presidential election and was perceived by some as political propaganda as it gave the President something of a starring role, Bigelow’s blockbuster basically ignores Obama completely. Instead, the forthcoming film focuses solely on the relentless work of CIA agents on the ground and the expertise and bravery of the Navy SEALs. In fact, some critics have gone as far as to proclaim that the film portrays the President in a negative light, and disseminates false information to the public. Obama graces the screen just once throughout the entire 150-minute production in a scene that features agents watching a '60 Minutes' interview in which he asserts: “I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture and I’m going to make sure we don’t torture.” “Zero Dark Thirty” shows American intelligence waterboarding potential terrorists in an attempt to attain crucial information. More On This... Jennifer Beals: Playing call girl in 'The Mob Doctor' 'so much fun' “Putting it mildly, this is an extremely controversial subject.

I wanted to try to capture the complexity of the situation, morally and psychologically. It’s not an aesthetic goal of the film to settle scores, or end the debate about torture’s efficacy – which is still ongoing, even within the community of people who advocated for it and implemented it,” said the screenwriter, Mark Boal. “But it was part of the story and we needed to include it. The goal was to portray the events vividly and to make them real for the audience.” “Zero Dark Thirty” refrains from making any partisan political statements. Rather, it emphasizes the unrelenting desire and willingness of the American military and intelligence experts to put their own lives on the line to get the very dangerous job done. The story is told from the perspective of young CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain), based on a real-life operative. “The public knows very little about what the unsung heroes in the intelligence community go through, which is as it has to be, but here you get a rare opportunity to have a first-hand look at the men and women at the heart of one of the most covert operations in history,” Bigelow remarked.

The decision made by the Oscar-winning director and her screenwriting cohort to spotlight on-the-ground Americans as opposed to high-ranking Capitol Hill officials has attracted praise from media critics. “What a relief someone in Hollywood is making a film about America's true heroes – our fighting men and women – and not politicians in D.C.,” noted Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture at the Media Research Center. “Taking down our nation's top enemy is definitely something the CIA and the SEALS deserve massive credit for. It's about time that Hollywood did its part saying what all of us want to say: ‘Thank you!’” And it seems “Zero Dark Thirty” has had to come a long, long way since Boal first started writing. “It’s gone through two iterations. It began six years ago as a movie about the failure to capture bin Laden in Tora Bora. I spent a few years on that, researching and writing, and we were in pre-production of that film by 2011, with scouts in Romania,” Boal added. "Then, more or less out of the blue, bin Laden was killed, and that film became ancient history.

So I had to start again." "Zero Dark Thirty” opens in limited release on December 19 and nationwide on January 11. Hollie McKay has been a FoxNews.com staff reporter since 2007. She has reported extensively from the Middle East on the rise and fall of terrorist groups such as ISIS in Iraq. Follow her on twitter at @holliesmckay Advertisement Kathryn Bigelow: under fire | Film | The Guardian Kathryn Bigelow Kathryn Bigelow: under fire The Hurt Locker made Kathryn Bigelow the first woman to win a best director Oscar. But some say her new thriller, Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, endorses torture Kathryn Bigelow: ‘I was surprised to learn women were at the centre of this hunt.

And I was sort of surprised that I was surprised.' Photograph: Dan Busta/Corbis Outline Friday 11 January 2013 19.01 EST First published on Friday 11 January 2013 19.01 EST Share on Messenger Close When Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces two years ago, Kathryn Bigelow was deep in preparations for a movie about the failure to capture him during the early stages of the war in Afghanistan. The script, by Mark Boal , was more or less finished; they had scouted locations in Kazakhstan and were preparing to helicopter into Bagram and Jalalabad to see for themselves the terrain they'd be trying to replicate. When news of the death came in, it blew apart the project in such a way, Bigelow says, that any frustration was eclipsed by a sense of being "propelled by history". In fact, she says, "I think our first thought was, 'Well, at least we have a third act.'" As it turned out, Bigelow and Boal, who had successfully collaborated on The Hurt Locker three years earlier, quickly realised it was not a third act but "the entire story".

Zero Dark Thirty , which has been igniting feverish reactions since before its first screening, is an account of the 10-year CIA search for Bin Laden and the culminating raid on his compound in Pakistan. It opens with a black screen, over which real audio from 9/11 plays, the screams and entreaties as shocking now as they ever were, and what follows, including scenes of brutal "enhanced interrogation" of detainees in CIA blackspots, is either "a wrenchingly sad, soul-shaking story about revenge and its moral costs" ( the New York Times ) or "false advertising for waterboarding " ( the New Yorker ) – a film that, ultimately, "endorses torture". Bigelow only finished the edit two weeks ago and, in a Park Avenue hotel suite in the throes of publicity, has the air of someone surfacing to scenes of unexpected confusion. By Hollywood standards, it was a lightning-quick turnaround – just three months of filming, with India and Jordan standing in for Pakistan and Afghanistan. At 61, Bigelow is a striking figure, slight, angular and tall (5ft 11in). She is softly spoken and pulls awkwardly at the sleeves of her jumper.

Her assiduously neutral position on the politics of the film brings to mind, ironically, a politician. There will be many accounts of the war on terror, she says, of which the new film will be just one: a specific story, told from a specific point of view, informed by Boal's interviews with CIA operatives. "I feel very confident with his reporting," she says, "very confident with my handling of his reporting. And I think we can both, with confidence, stand by that film from beginning to end." Not even its harshest critics dispute that Zero Dark Thirty is a beautifully made film, with clean, sharp lines, completely gripping, and light on any extraneous material. There is almost no backstory for the characters, just the grinding sense of mission that propels people working in extraordinary circumstances. There is nothing glorifying about the torture scenes, either, which illustrate both the hideous reality behind the euphemistic language and the fact that you can't trust information coming out of them: when asked for details of an imminent attack, the detainee – beaten, waterboarded, dragged on a leash and finally shut in a box – mumbles in terror and bewilderment every day of the week.

(Later, when not under duress, he gives up a key name, which critics of the film say sets up a false causality: there is no conclusive evidence that torture led to this particular disclosure.) Bigelow's approach to the film and the ensuing furore has clearly been influenced by her experiences on The Hurt Locker. In that movie, the wider controversies of the war in Iraq are sidelined in favour of the experiences of the soldiers: the beads of sweat, the dust, the fly dancing on an eyelash as it looks, unblinkingly, down the barrel of a gun. These small details accrete, over the course of the film, into something like a moral force. Bigelow justifiably won the 2010 Oscar for best director, the first woman to win in that category . Zero Dark Thirty takes "a similar perspective", she says, with its focus on the individuals, a group of CIA agents tasked with finding Bin Laden and played with brilliant understatement by Jessica Chastain , Jennifer Ehle and Jason Clarke . "It's a very human piece and it's a story of determination," Bigelow says.

"We can all, as human beings, identify with believing in something – believing in something so strongly that there is nothing else in your life." Bigelow (in sunglasses) directing Zero Dark Thirty Furthermore, she says, "It's a real tribute to the men and women in the intelligence community who obviously have to, by the nature of their job, work in complete secrecy. It's a nod of respect and great gratitude." The difficulty here is that expressing respect and gratitude to those involved in controversial interrogation techniques is not quite the same as expressing gratitude to those in the relatively neutral field of bomb disposal. When Bigelow says her aim was "to be faithful to the research, to not have an agenda, to hope that people go to see the movie and judge for themselves", she overlooks the film's structural sympathies. There will, I suggest, be people who argue that torture is such a black-and-white issue that to provoke sympathy for those engaged in it is in itself a reprehensible act. "That's an interesting point. But I think that you certainly see the human cost. And also, if it had not been part of that history, it would not have been in the movie.

You can't have it one way and not the other way." By "human cost", she means both the bloodied, humiliated form of the detainee in the film and the deadened responses of the CIA agents, some of whom were killed in the 2009 suicide bombing of their base in Afghanistan. Bigelow trusted Boal's reporting when he turned in the script, but I wonder if she insisted on knowing his sources – if, when it came to the most controversial scenes, she needed to satisfy herself that they were double-, triple- or quadruple-sourced. "Having worked with Mark on The Hurt Locker, I felt like his attention to detail is so acute – and he comes from the world of investigative journalism – that it's sort of like… He described the way we worked together as he cuts the vegetables and I make the soup." Right, so she didn't feel it necessary to, um, meet the farmer who grew the vegetables? There is a short, confused pause. "I suppose. That's one way of looking at it." Bigelow's absolute conviction in her own rightness is a habit of mind she has had since childhood. There is no other way to direct, she says: you wouldn't get through the day.

She supposes it came from her parents. Her mother, a Stanford graduate, taught English and her father ran a paint factory. They lived in California and took a mildly modish approach to rearing their only child, subscribing, Bigelow says, "to a certain kind of education where I had to make all… This is so crazy, but as a child I had to make all my own decisions." Such as what? "If a friend said, 'Can you sleep over?' I'd go to my parents and they'd say, 'Well, it's up to you.' It was always up to me. It created a tremendous sense of independence, which of course my mother regretted when I left home at 17 and went to school… I suppose being confident in a decision-making process is something that helps me a lot in production. You cannot equivocate." After leaving home, she went first to art college in San Francisco and then on to a fine arts programme run by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York . At that point her only thought was to become a fine artist: it suited the unsociable side of her nature. Bigelow's diffidence is something she acknowledges with wryness and regret.

She finds self-promotion irksome, which is why, perhaps, she promotes Boal so strenuously, calling herself the "delivery system" for his content. (Bear in mind that for two years in the early 1990s Bigelow was married to James Cameron , which, I imagine, might turn anyone off the charms of self-promotion.) "I'm kind of shy by nature," she says. "When you meet with an actor, you have to get very specific very quickly, because you've got a scene to shoot. In a work situation, that comes very easily. Any other situation: not at all." She thinks about it for a moment. "It's a strange dichotomy. I wish that I could pretend in my life that I was working. I would probably be much more effective." She laughs. "I don't know." She got into film-making by default, after falling in with some video artists, among them Lawrence Weiner , and being inspired to make a short film herself.

It was called The Set-Up (1978) and ran along textbook grad-student lines: a 20-minute exposition of "two-men fighting each other as the semioticians Sylvère Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky deconstruct the images in voiceover". It seemed, she says, "like a very good fit. Film wasn't something I searched for; I backed into it." There followed a series of low-budget films, the odd music video – for New Order, in 1987 – and, in 1991, Bigelow's first big hit, Point Break , the surfing blockbuster starring Keanu Reaves and Patrick Swayze. It established a certain muscularity of style, which Bigelow consolidated with Blue Steel , Strange Days and, in 2002, K-19: The Widowmaker , the Harrison Ford/Liam Neeson nuclear submarine movie that more or less tanked. Navy Seals raid Osama bin Laden's compound in Zero Dark Thirty. Photograph: Jonathan Olley/Columbia Pictures "I can't even think about it," she says on the subject of failure.

"I feel like there's so much soul-searching going on in the making of a film, it's enough for any given production. I'm content in the knowledge that we've made something we're proud of. That's what gives me the most solace." She is firmly of the belief that commenting excessively on women's restrictions in Hollywood only compounds their ghettoisation – although this is also, surely, another facet of a generally apolitical mindset. "If there's specific resistance to women making movies," she has said , "I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies." Occasionally, however, there's no avoiding it. The morning of the interview, the novelist Brett Easton Ellis tweets that Bigelow "would be considered a mildly interesting film-maker if she was a man but since she's a very hot woman, she's really overrated" . ( He has since apologised. ) Was she aware he'd been an arsehole in her general direction? Bigelow laughs. "I was told about it and I just…" She waves a hand dismissively.

If not politically, then as a film-maker at least, Bigelow must have been delighted that two of the CIA sources in Boal's script were youngish women. As Lynndie England showed during the Abu Ghraib scandal , women in warfare provoke more complex reactions than their male counterparts. "Well, that's the thing," Bigelow says. "Women in defence, I think, are sort of the unsung heroes. I was first of all surprised to learn that women were at the centre of this hunt. And I was sort of surprised that I was surprised. You don't think of a young woman being a terrorist-hunter." Does she think women should be able to serve on the frontline? "You know, I don't know. I can't imagine why not." Bigelow has been working on the film with such intensity – "You work in this dark room, you work in this tunnel" – that there has been nothing much outside it for almost a year. Making Zero Dark Thirty was like an epic puzzle, she says, and she sheepishly confesses that's one of the things she likes best: "Logistics – I know it sounds crazy, [but] I do I enjoy it.

Because it's like finding order out of chaos." Given the film's scope and ambition, the budget was relatively tight at an estimated $20m. The major expense was recreating the compound where Bin Laden was discovered. Bigelow became obsessed with the accuracy, right down to the fixtures and fittings. "We had to build it in a structurally sound way to withstand the rotor wash of the helicopters. The production designer even researched what tiles were on the floor, replicated the bed frame and the oak chest of drawers – it was all from the ABC footage they were playing after the assault ." When she gives any thought to the vastness of the story, and to the radioactive sensitivity of so many of its elements, she reassures herself that, "as a film-maker, it's a responsibility to engage with the time I live in. You're kind of creating an imagistic version of living history." And with all the risks that entails. Beyond it is blankness. A week or so earlier, when Bigelow left the first screening in New York, Jennifer Ehle walked along the street with her and asked how she was doing. "And I said to her, 'I feel kind of… I don't know.'" She shrugs and pulls at her jumper.

"Without purpose all of a sudden." • Zero Dark Thirty is released on 25 January. • This article was amended on 14 January 2013 to correct a rota/rotor homophone. Alex von Tunzelmann: While Kathryn Bigelow's film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden has been ridiculed for its Arabic dialogue, CIA secrecy prevents historians from fully assessing its accuracy Published: 25 Jan 2013

Question: Which Kathryn Bigelow directed film, centred on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden?
Answer: Zero Dark Thirty