Clearly the front runner at this year's Berlinale is Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's
The Road to Guantanamo, a docu-drama in the same style as Winterbottom's previous Golden Bear winner
In This World. Like
In This World,
Guantanamo is a road movie from the East (read Islamic) to the West (read post-capitalistic industrialized countries). But whereas the first was a self-willed trip in the direction of a dream, however false,
Guantanamo is a forced voyage into hell. The movie -- part documentary, part dramatic recreation -- tells in as simple a way possible the events that led four British citizens from Pakistani, then to Afghanistan, then (for three of them -- one was lost in the war) to Guantanamo as "enemy combatants," and finally back to England.
Winterbottom was joined by two of the "Tipton Three" (Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal) for a press conference in which Winterbottom reiterated that this was just a movie about these men's experience. But as the reaction from the international press clearly indicated this was the story of the festival. The bad news for the film was that due to its popularity, many US buyers were kept out of the screening with nary another chance to see it here. But if any movie needs an immediate road to US distribution, this is it.
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posted by Peter Bowen @ 2/15/2006 05:11:00 AM
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