The Road to the Golden Bear?
February 15th, 2006 by Andre Soares
David D’Arcy via GreenCine Daily: "[The Road to Guantanamo co-director] Michael Winterbottom put it this way: Imagine someone told you five years ago that the US would set up a prison outside its own borders - in Cuba, no less - in which they held hundreds of detainees (and there are around 500 still there right now), filing no formal charges, denying the right to any trial, never mind a fair one, and flying in the face of any definition of basic human rights. You’d laugh. But we’ve long since grown used to the idea that there is such a thing as Guantanamo Bay. The aim of the film, paraphrasing Winterbottom, is to get those who see it unused to the idea again."
The Road to Guantanamo, which Winterbottom co-directed with Mat Whitecross, is being touted as the Fahrenheit 9/11 of the Berlin Film Festival. Michael Moore’s anti-George Bush documentary won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004.
The Berlin screening of Winterbottom’s film coincided with the showing on Australian television of newly revealed - and reportedly even more shocking - photos and videos clips shot at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison in which inmates were viciously abused by American military personnel. Several lower-ranking soldiers were eventually tried and convicted of the abuse.
More on The Road to Guantanamo
List of the British Academy of Film 2006 nominees
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