(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 28 - In November 2001 the engineer Mohamedou Ould Slahi, born in 1970, engineer in Germany and Canada, was arrested by the police during a visit to his family in Mauritania and ended up on a Ciaprima flight to Jordan and then for Guantanamo, as a suspected terrorist.
It was the beginning for him of a prison that lasted 14 years without any formal charges, in which he suffered every kind of physical and psychological torture.
An odyssey that Slahi was able to tell even before being released in 2016, collecting notes, published in 2015, in the memorialGuantanamo Diary (published in Italy by Piemme with the title 12 years in Guantanamo).
A story that Oscar-winning director Kevin MacDonald traces in The Mauritanian, with Tahar Rahim, in Mohamedou's years and Jodie Foster in those of the lawyer NancyHollander who after years of battles managed to get him out.
In the cast also Benedict Cumberbatch and Shailene Woodley.
"It's not often that a mainstream film shows this kind of story from the perspective of a Muslim man," explains Jodie Foster in the online Q&A with MacDonald and Rahim organized by the Hollywood Reporter. "We see a person who after going through all this suffering is still capable of loving and forgiving. there is the theme of Guantanamo, which is still open, a crazy thing ... We would all like to see it closed "The Oscar-winning performance for her performance was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, while Tahar Rahim for Best Supporting Actress. actor of a drama film.
Kevin MacDonald was immediately deeply impressed by the book and the first version of the script: "I found it a testimony of an absolute truth but I didn't know how to render all this in a film".
MacDonald was about to say no to the project "but then one of the producers advised me to talk to Mohamedou. I imagined he was traumatized and bitter.
Instead I found myself in front of a man full of humor, cultured and with a brilliant mind. which made peace with what had happened to him. That's what convinced me to make the film. "
(HANDLE).
