In this issue of Currents, political cartoonist Mana Neyestani talks about the terrors he experienced inside Iran’s Evin prison, and how his work on a graphic novel-memoir helped him cope with the trauma (if you missed it, flip back to page 10).
Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari also made his experiences inside Evin the subject of a 2011 memoir, Then They Came for Me, which has now been adapted into the film Rosewater, written and directed by Jon Stewart. Bahari was imprisoned shortly after appearing on Stewart’s The Daily Show, an interview that was played back to Bahari during interrogations in Tehran’s notorious prison and used as evidence that he worked with American spies. The film’s title is a reference to the interrogator that Bahari, often blindfolded, came to recognize by his fragrance. Rosewater, which stars Gael Garcia Bernal (above) as Bahari, is Stewart’s directorial debut and opens in theaters on November 14.
Lene Bech Sillesen is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow her on Twitter at @LeneBechS.