Berlin: Andreas Dresen on His Long Journey to Make Guantanamo Drama ‘Rabiye vs. George W. Bush’

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The German filmmaker discusses the challenges of shooting in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 and why 'we all have to be vigilant when it comes to injustice.'

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It took years before Dresen found a way in. Instead of telling Kurnaz’s story of capture, torture and injustice — a story told in Stefan Schaller’s 2013 drama— Dresen would switch the focus to Kurnaz’s mother, Rabiye, whose determined fight to free her son took her all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court., which premiered in competition at the 2022 Berlinale on Feb. 12, and is being sold worldwide by The Match Factory, is her story.

I’ve actually been working on this story since 2008. When I read Murat’s book, his story utterly upset me, and I became obsessed with it. I went to Bremen and met with Murat a few times. I tried over several years with three different screenwriters to make a feature film screenplay out of the book. And what can I say? We failed. I couldn’t make it work as a film. I need hope in my films. So you don’t walk out of the cinema completely depressed. [But] I couldn’t find hope in Guantanamo.

We started to look at it from their perspective. [Screenwriter] Laila Stieler came in, and the film switched to the mother’s story, to her fight to free Murat.Well, it was a perspective I found easier to get into. Even if you’re not from an immigrant background like Kurnaz, I think every mother or every parent can imagine what it means if you suddenly found out that your son is in Guantanamo. But the key point for me is by changing the perspective, the story becomes one of hope.

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