Zero Dark Birthday draws from the film Zero Dark Thirty, in which a female CIA agent named Maya pursues Osama Bin Laden. The racial politics of the original film depend on the total separation of the white, female protagonist from her Pakistani surroundings, represented in Zero Dark Thirty as a sea of brown faces. Zero Dark Birthday inverts these racist optics, replacing the movement towards certainty and distinction with feelings of in-distinction and depression. As Chastain moves closer to her target, she becomes increasingly unable to separate herself from him. The CIA tactics used to capture Bin Laden are reimagined as psychic processes, in which the boundaries of self and other are destabilized.