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Rosewater
In 2009, Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was covering Iran';s volatile elections for Newsweek. One of the few reporters living in the country with access to US media, he made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a taped interview with comedian Jason Jones. The interview was intended as satire, but if the Tehran authorities got the joke they didn';t like it - and it would quickly came back to haunt Bahari when he was rousted from his family home and thrown into prison. Making his directorial debut, Jon Stewart tells the tale of Bahari';s months-long imprisonment and interrogation in this powerful and affecting docudrama featuring a potent and performance by Gael García Bernal recounting Bahari';s efforts to maintain his hope and his sanity in the face of isolation and persecution-through memories of his family, recollections of the music he loves, and thoughts of his wife and unborn child.



















7 October 1974, Kozoglu, Kelkit District, Turkey

16 April 1984, Stockport, England, UK


8 September 1979, London, England, UK





5 June 1954, Izmir, Turkey








30 November 1978, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico



11 May 1952, Tehran, Iran





November 19, 2015
For the most part Rosewater is well-acted, tension-filled and slyly iconoclastic. Say hello to Jon Stewart, movie director.
May 10, 2015
Stewart proves himself an adept visual stylist here, using simple techniques such as lighting scenes using the glow of a laptop screen to reflect the darkness that comes from being physically cut off from the people Bahari cares about the most.
May 29, 2015
Despite a few stylistic flourishes, the production is an earnest and straightforward account of what happened, with moments of naturalistic humor based on some major miscommunication.
August 10, 2016
[Rosewater features] fine playing from Bernal and Bodnia, and striking mixing of real and recreated footage of the riots that transpired after the rigged election.
November 09, 2015
It's a somewhat bumpy road for the first time filmmaker, but it's surprisingly effective when it needs to be.
November 16, 2014
This is Jon Stewart's directorial debut; the talk show comedian has a handle on the material and conveys it clearly.
June 07, 2016
We rarely get the sense that Stewart is talking down to us - which is why it's such a disappointment that 'Rosewater', is so often pitched and played like a carefully dumbed-down TV movie.
November 21, 2014
The main question Rosewater grapples with is whether Stewart can hack it as a filmmaker. The answer: sort of?
November 14, 2014
Rosewater ... has an urgency that's all about the storytelling smarts of its first-time writer-director.
November 14, 2014
Stewart does a credible job of maintaining the story's immediacy, but I must say I felt relieved that the film wasn't a masterpiece. If it was, we'd have more reason to fear Stewart will leave The Daily Show.
November 17, 2014
The hard-focus clarity of the images (Bobby Bukowski did the cinematography) leads to an intimacy with anguish that passes into expressionism.
November 21, 2014
Rosewater certainly has merit as an act of atonement on Stewart's part and a tribute to people like Bahari... In the end, however, the movie needs to stand on its own, apart from its noble intentions and the popularity of its writer-director.