Academy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras filed a lawsuit on Monday against the U.S. government for allegedly subjecting her to years of targeted harassment and searches by U.S. security agents.

In the suit, the 51-year-old documentary filmmaker accuses the government of subjecting her to "Kafkaesque harassment" at airports around the world from 2006 to 2012. As a result, she says that she has been detained over 50 times at both foreign and domestic airports.

Now Poitras is suing the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence U.S. She is also demanding an explanation as to why she has repeatedly searched, questioned and force to undergo enhanced security screenings despite the fact that she does not have a criminal record.

"I'm filing this lawsuit because the government uses the U.S. border to bypass the rule of law," said Poitras in a statement released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This simply should not be tolerated in a democracy. I am also filing this suit in support of the countless other less high-profile people who have also been subjected to years of Kafkaesque harassment at the borders. We have a right to know how this system works and why we are targeted."

She filed the lawsuit after her Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for case files, surveillance records and "documents pertaining to her systemic targeting" received no response.

Poitras, who won an Academy Award for "Citizenfour," a 2014 documentary about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, says that the searches and interrogations began when she was filming a documentary on the Iraq War from an Iraqi doctor's perspective.

The searches and seizures finally came to an end after journalist Glenn Greenwald publicized the harassment she faced during her travels, reports Jezebel. A group of filmmakers also rallied to stop the surveillance.

The Boston native said she was often told by airport security agents that she had a criminal record and that her name appeared on a national security threat database.

According to the suit, agents also seized her cell phone, laptop, camera and notebooks and had once threatened to handcuff her for using a pen to take notes during her detention.