Jon Stewart’s ‘Rosewater’ Gets a Release Date

By
Rebecca Murray
-

Rosewater gets a theatrical release date

Jon Stewart took time off from his The Daily Show hosting gig to make his feature film debut as a writer/director with Rosewater, based on Maziar Bahari’s bestselling memoir, Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival. Open Road Films picked up the dramatic movie back in May 2014 and has now set a November 7, 2014 (a prime awards season contender opening slot) for its theatrical release.

Gael Garcia Bernal leads the cast and Stewart, Scott Rudin, and Gigi Pritzker produced the film. Lila Yacoub, Eli Bush and Chris McShane executive produced Rosewater.

Here’s the details on Rosewater, courtesy of Open Road Films:

Rosewater follows the Tehran-born Bahari, a 42-year-old broadcast journalist with Canadian citizenship living in London. In June 2009, Bahari returned to Iran to interview Mir-Hossein Moussavi, who was the prime challenger to controversial incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As Moussavi’s supporters rose up to protest Ahmadinejad’s victory declaration hours before the polls closed on election day, Bahari endured great personal risk by submitting camera footage of the unfolding street riots to the BBC. Bahari was soon arrested by Revolutionary Guard police, led by a man identifying himself only as “Rosewater,” who proceeded to torture and interrogate the journalist over the next 118 days.

In October 2009, with Bahari’s wife leading an international campaign from London to have her husband freed, and Western media outlets including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart continuing to keep the story alive, Iranian authorities released Bahari on $300,000 bail and the promise he would act as a spy for the government.


-By Rebecca Murray

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