Kathryn Bigelow’s new movie Zero Dark Thirty is a “complex look” at the hunt for the al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. In an interview with Reuters, the Oscar winning director reveals that the movie has been “mischaracterized” for a year, whilst she was in the process of making the movie and she and her screenwriter Mark Boal want audiences to “go and see it and judge for themselves.”

Boal and Bigelow will have faced many decisions when it came to mapping out the movie and the storyline they were going to pursue and opted against the idea of a Hollywood-style glamorized look at the capture of Bin Laden. Instead, Zero Dark Thirty explores the “previously undisclosed details of the mission to hunt down the man behind the September 11 attacks.” This, however, has led to a great deal of controversy as Bigelow and Boal have been accused of being in receipt of classified information, that had been leaked to them. The movie stars Jessica Chastain, as a CIA officer, Maya, who tracks down Bin Laden through the use of “brutal interrogations, electronic surveillance and old-fashioned spying.”

Bigelow says, of the movie that “It's ten years compressed into two plus hours… it’s really the rhythm of the hunt that creates the rhythm of the movie.” Reviews of the film so far have been largely positive, Bigelow will now be praying that audiences overlook the myth and controversy surrounding the latest product of her toil and assess the movie on its merits.