A quick dive into Hollywood's portrayal of gender issues within foreign policy and international security. This post is focusing on Katherine Bigelow's 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty, exploring the struggles of protagonist Maya on her hunt for high profile international war criminal Osama Bin Laden. Here, I discuss Bigelow's analysis of gender roles in the US Central Intelligence Agency, but also wider gendered themes touched on in the film - such as the contrast between perceptions of masculinity in US military operations and Al-Qaeda's retaliation tactics across the Middle East.