European Films

Go to the Road to Guantanamo entry in our film database for cast information, trailer, poster, ratings and your comments.

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One of the most awaited films here at the Berlin Film Festival is certainly Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’ docu-fiction The Road to Guantanamo about the Tipton Three, three Brits of Pakistani origin who were detained in Guantanamo Bay Prison as terrorists for several years after having been scooped up in Afghanistan in 2001 during an American raid on the Taliban. The Tipton Three have always claimed to be innocent and were eventually released, though they have not officially been acquitted of the charges that the Americans have brought against them.

Produced by FilmFour for British television, the film will likely be picked up for theatrical distribution in most of Europe, where Winterbottom is an arthouse favourite and where political (read: anti-American) documentaries will find a small, appreciative crowd in the wake of the strong division over the Iraqi war in most European countries. Whether audiences will learn something new from The Road to Guantanomo is debatable, as there are no new shocking revelations for anyone who has kept up with the news for the last five years. Winterbottom and Whitecross seem more interested in refocusing attention on the subject of the existence of Guantanamo in general as, at the same time, they try to approximate on a more visceral level what happened to the Tipton Three in particular.

The film blends the comments as provided by the real Tipton Three in interview footage with actors portraying them in re-enacted scenes of their ordeal in Afghanistan (which was invaded and heavily bombed at the time of their stay there), and in the illegal prison for terrorists on Cuba that is Guantanamo Bay. The film largely succeeds in keeping the audience’s attention because of its ghastly subject matter and because of the directors' intense focus and relentless sense of forward momentum, even when the Three have arrived in Guantanamo, apparently forever. Anyone who believes that Guantanamo Bay prison and the terrible methods used there (at least as recounted by the Tipton Three) are legitimate, is unlikely to appreciate the film's condemning tone. The Road to Guantanamo will be preaching to the converted, though perhaps the converted still need preaching to, since Guantanomo, despite being technically illegal, still exists.

Buy the DVD of The Road to Guantanamo on amazon.co.uk.