Jon Stewart wrote and directed this story of Mazier Bahari’s (well-played by Gael Garcia Bernal–Bronwen has a crush on him–in some excellent cross-cultural casting) imprisonment for espionage in Iran based on the latter’s memoir, Then They Came for Me. An Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and journalist working for Newsweek,. Bahari was covering the 2009 Iranian presidential election, with its many irregularities, and the demos, riots, arrests and killings that followed. He is interviewed by The Daily Show’s Jason Jones in a goof interview and the results are the very definition of tragic-comedy. Occasional humor (it is, after all, Stewart’s project done with Bahari’s deep involvement, he’s even in one scene in the movie) lighten and bring real hilarity to this horror show, with deepest appreciation going to the great state of New Jersey. It is mostly a nightmare of interrogation, beatings, isolation, and deep conversations with his deceased father and sister, both of whom endured imprisonment and torture as Communists, one under the Shah, the other under the Ayatollah. The film is overly sincere but I felt it really worked to make Bahari’s dilemma and his sense of isolation palpable. It also speaks to the empowerment that comes when the imprisoned and the isolated come to understand they have not been forgotten and how frightened and, paradoxically, weak his torturers are. Another example of Leonard Cohen’s central place in world culture and the power of song. If there’s a political problem, it’s that the film portrays the clerics’ opponents as if they are simply liberal democrats (like Stewart himself is), just fighting the good fight. Something tells me the situation is more complicated than that. Note: Bahari is the first Muslim to do a film on the Holocaust and has recently done a documentary on the persecution of the Bahia in Iran