Open Road Films must have confidence in Jon Stewart’s Rosewater to become an awards season contender, based on the release date they have given the film. The Daily Show host’s first feature film as director will come out this November.
The film will have its limited release begin on Nov. 7, reports TheWrap. No wide release date was set, but that will probably be determined based on how well a movie whose selling point is the director, not the actors, does.
Open Road picked up the film in May and it will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
The movie, which Stewart made in the Middle East during a break from his hit Comedy Central show, is based on Maziar Bahari’s Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival. Bahari was reporting for the BBC from his native Iran during the 2009 elections to interview Mir-Hossein Moussavi. However, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won, protests began. Bahari tried to send video to the BBC and was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard and imprisoned for 118 days. (The title of the movie comes from a name one of the arresting officers went by.)
Stewart was a staunch supporter of Bahari’s story, as he kept doing stories about him on The Daily Show. Eventually, he was released on $300,000 bail.
Gael Garcia Bernal stars in the film, which was produced by Stewart, Scott Rudin and Gigi Pritzker.
image courtesy of Tina Kaawaloa/INFevents.com