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Poster for Rosewater

Rosewater

2014 · 1h 43m · R Drama
Directed by Jon Stewart

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Overview

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.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
Rotten

The main question Rosewater grapples with is whether Stewart can hack it as a filmmaker. The answer: sort of?

Esther Breger, The New Republic
Rotten

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.

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
Fresh

The hard-focus clarity of the images (Bobby Bukowski did the cinematography) leads to an intimacy with anguish that passes into expressionism.

David Denby, New Yorker
Fresh

This is Jon Stewart's directorial debut; the talk show comedian has a handle on the material and conveys it clearly.

James Berardinelli, ReelViews
Fresh

Rosewater ... has an urgency that's all about the storytelling smarts of its first-time writer-director.

Bob Mondello, NPR

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