Starring: Docudrama
Director: Michael Winterbottom and Matt Whitecross
Rated: MA15+
AFTER a screening at the Berlin Film Festival where it won an award for direction, The Road to Guantanamo was given a cinema release, a television screening and DVD distribution within a few weeks.
It is well worth catching.
Michael Winterbottom has had a prolific output during the last 10 years, including Jude, Wonderland, The Claim and, most recently, A Cock and Bull Story.
However, he has also ventured into the political and social areas with his Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), a picture of an American journalist experiencing war in the Balkans and his Berlin Golden Bear winner, In This World.
In This World traced the journey of a young Afghan refugee from his life in the camps, across Iran into Europe and his getting to England. It was brief, documentary-like and filmed in authentic locations.
Winterbottom and his co-director, Matt Whitecross, have created a film that combines documentary style with feature film storytelling, all the more vivid because of this.
As might be expected, it takes a stance very critical of the Americans and their treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and, finally, in the camp at Guantanamo Bay.
Its partisan attitudes have been supported by reports from Guantanamo and reports about it, especially from the United Nations.
The film takes on the story of three young British men from Tipton who went to Pakistan for a wedding. They were not saints and some had police records for petty offences. They ventured into Afghanistan out of some kind of solidarity (which critics of their story say is at least imprudent but suspect more sinister motives) and soon found themselves under fire with the American invasion.
They tried to get back to Pakistan (one of their friends disappeared) but, instead, found themselves among the Taliban prisoners.
The film re-enacts the treatment they received. At times it is quite brutal.
They are treated with deep suspicion. Psychological pressure is put on them, naming them as terrorists, forcing them to confess.
After these camps, they are blindfolded and sent to Guantanamo in Cuba. Again, the film spends a great deal of time showing the bullying (to say the least), the isolation and psychological pressure, aspects of contempt by guards of their Muslim beliefs and continued aggressive interrogations.
It should be said that some guards are presented as more humane.
The three young British men were eventually released from Guantanamo and are free.
They are interviewed throughout the film and we finally see them at the wedding in Pakistan.
Topical, sobering and challenging, the SIGNIS jury gave this film its prize at Venice this year.
