Photo: Open Road Films

Chris Luckett

Controversial director Oliver Stone, absent from the big screen since 2012’s Savages, will return this year with a bio-pic of Edward Snowden.

The first trailer for Snowden debuted online yesterday and the film looks to have the potential to be Stone’s strongest movie in over a decade.

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Snowden will look at the CIA agent who exposed the NSA’s global surveillance programs in 2013 and remains abroad, seeking asylum.

Snowden’s story has already been told once before, first-hand, in 2014’s Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour.

Snowden opens across North America on September 16, 2016.