Rosewater(2014)
dir. Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart directs a jailed reporter's real story.
Where to watch: Free with ads: Tubi, Pluto TV, Plex, The CW, YouTube; Prime Video subscription; rent $3.99 Amazon/Apple TV/Fandango At Home; buy $14.99 (JustWatch US, checked 2026-11-09). Verify.Letterboxd ↗
Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian journalist for Newsweek, is arrested in Tehran during the 2009 election protests, in part because of a satirical Daily Show segment he had appeared in. He spends 118 days in Evin Prison, blindfolded in interrogations with a man who smells of rosewater. Stewart adapted it from Bahari's memoir and directed it himself, his first film.
Why it’s here
It's a film about the machinery of a state that needs a confession. What's punk is its refusal to treat the interrogator as a cartoon, and the way a joke becomes evidence. What's pedagogical is the access to how disinformation works from the inside: what the regime needs the prisoner to say, and why. Pairs with Persepolis, Zahra's Paradise (suggested 11-05) and Women Without Men (suggested 10-31). Note: R-rated; torture scenes and a coerced confession; older teens and adults. Based on a memoir, with dramatized scenes. Jon Stewart's America (The Book) is already in the catalog.
Where This Film Lives
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