Film distributor STX films has released a trailer for The Mauritanian, a film adaptation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s 2015 prison memoir, Guantánamo Diary. The film stars French actor Tahar Rahim as Slahi and Jodie Foster and Shailene Woodley as his attorneys, Nancy Hollander and Teri Duncan. The movie also features Benedict Cumberbatch as military prosecutor Stuart Couch. It’s set for release on Feb. 19, 2021.
As recently as last December, the film was titled Prisoner 760, referring to Slahi, the Mauritanian of the current title. Slahi was held as a suspected terrorist at the Guantánamo Bay detention center for 14 years, until 2016. There, by his account, he was regularly tortured but not formally charged with any crime.
Before its original publication, the memoir was heavily redacted by U.S. government officials, which would seem to make the work a particular challenge to adapt for film; some pages were completely blacked out, save for a few sentences. However, a new edition was published in 2017, which restored the redacted portions. According to STX Films’ summary, the film has its characters unveiling “a shocking and far reaching conspiracy."
Two of The Mauritanian’s screenwriters, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, co-wrote the 2018 BBC miniseries Informer, which told a fictional story of a man forced to become an informant for a counterterrorism unit. The new film is directed by Kevin Macdonald, who helmed the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland, based on Giles Foden’s 1998 novel.
Several of the cast members are well-known for their appearances in other book adaptations. Foster won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her portrayal of FBI agent Clarice Starling in the 1991 film of Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs; Woodley co-starred in the HBO series of Liane Moriarty’s bestseller Big Little Lies, among other adaptations; and Cumberbatch won a Emmy for playing a modernized version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective in the BBC series Sherlock.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
