In a piece penned for the Los Angeles Times, director Kathryn Bigelow addressed the criticism directed at her latest film, Zero Dark Thirty, which tells the story of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, saying the movie could not ignore the subject of torture.

"As for what I personally believe, which has been the subject of inquiries, accusations and speculation, I think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work," Bigelow wrote. "Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt."

The movie has drawn fierce criticisms for its depictions of torture, with Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California), Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and John McCain (R-Arizona) calling them "grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location of" bin Laden. A Senate panel is now investigating correspondence between CIA officials and Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, and whether the two were given "inappropriate" access to secret material.

In her letter, Bigelow addressed those concerns, positing that they "might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these U.S. policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen."

Source: Press Release