RoadToGuantanamo Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Mike Leigh Honored at Sarajevo Fest
Filed under: Foreign Language », Awards », Other Festivals », Cinematical Indie »
Welcome to Sarajevo ... Film Festival, that is. The Bosnian capital just had its 10th annual fest, and interestingly enough, the Uniqa Insurance Viewers Award (or Audience Award) went to The Road to Guantánamo, which was directed by Michael Winterbottom, who also made Welcome to Sarajevo. The top award, or Heart of Sarajevo, went to Das Fräulein, the feature debut of Swiss-born Andrea Staka, who is of Bosnian-Croatian heritage. The film, about three female immigrants from different sections of former Yugoslavia -- one Serbian, one Croatian, one Bosnian -- now living in Zurich, also took top honors at this year's Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland. Hopefully an American distributor will pick up this title so we can add to its accolades. Winner of an Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award was Mike Leigh. The filmmaker was recognized for his "outstanding contribution to the art of cinema and the support to the development of the Sarajevo Film Festival." According to the festival's website, Leigh has been an important influence on the relationship between the British film industry and the cinema of the Balkan region, and on the success of the festival, which was founded in 1997, less than two years after its city had been devastated by war.
Tribeca Review: The Road to Guantanamo
The Road to Guantanamo is a thoroughly engrossing, sufficiently cathartic, but frustratingly one-sided indictment of the American military's appalling treatment of foreign "enemy combatants". Michael Winterbottom (coming off Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, which might have been inexcusably silly if it hadn't been unbelievably dull), co-directed with longtime collaborator Mat Whitecross, and the two combine documentary-style interview footage with haunting, disturbing, and surprisingly beautiful reenactments, to tell the story of the Tipton Three -- three British-born Muslims mistaken for Taliban and imprisoned at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for over two years. Winterbottom, the renowned directorial chameleon whose other art house oddity of 2005 was the concert film/episodic porn 9 Songs, proves once again that if anyone is better at polarizing an audience, nobody does it with more style. He's got a potentially stunning piece of propaganda on his hands here -- it's just too bad he hasn't made a better film.
Winterbottom stays political
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Independent », Casting », Deals », Cinematical Indie »
Not content to rest on his political laurels,
The Road to Guantánamo director
Michael
Winterbottom has picked up the rights to Craig Murray's (the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan) memoirs, Murder
In Samarkand. Though it won't be published until June, Murray's work already has the British government up in arms
- in fact, the Foreign Office is threatening to sue him for "breach of confidence or of Crown copyright," if
and when the book comes out.According to Winterbottom, Murray, who was fired in 2004 "after drawing attention to torture and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan," has written his story with a surprisingly light touch. Said the director, "The book is fantastic...[like] a very funny version of a Graham Greene novel." How Murray makes extraordinary rendition and torture funny remains to be seen, but it's not hard to understand why someone of Winterbottom's sensibilities (don't forget, this is the man who made A Cock and Bull Story) was drawn to the story.
Cock and Bull star Steve Coogan is reportedly already in line to play Murray, but Winterbottom admits that it could take a year just to get the film "set up."
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