Jon Stewart's 'Rosewater' Gets Standing Ovation At TIFF Premiere

by UInterviewSeptember 9, 2014, 12:00 am >

Jon Stewart is in Toronto to promote his directorial debut Rosewater, which was screened at TIFF Monday night, with star Gael Garcia Bernal and the journalist he portrays, Maziar Bahari, in attendance.

Stewart, known for hosting Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, took three months off last summer to shoot the drama, which chronicles the story of Iranian journalist Bahari, who was imprisoned in Iran on suspicion of being a spy. The film premiered at Telluride last week before coming to Toronto, and Stewart’s directorial debut is already earning a heap of buzz.

The film made its Toronto debut Monday night, earning a standing ovation from the audience. Though it wasn’t Stewart’s first time seeing the movie with a live audience, the experience was unique in other ways.

“[It] was very special to have Maziar, [his wife] Paola, and Gael there, and it was the first time I had my crew together from Jordan and from here, so to have everyone together and see it together was really nice. Then Maziar had to go thank his wife up on stage, and everybody got weepy, and the whole thing fell apart. But we were doing very well up until this point,” Stewart told EW of the screening.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>With Jon and Gael at Princess of Wales Theatre, TIFF 2014 <a href="https://t.co/H38a4od9K8">pic.twitter.com/H38a4od9K8</a></p>— Maziar Bahari (@maziarbahari) <a href="https://twitter.com/maziarbahari/status/509143090398253056">September 9, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Known for making fun of his own acting past, Stewart says he trusted his actors to know their craft while shooting, calling his job “choreography.”

“It’s funny – trying to bring the intention and the [right] emotion and the [right] energy – it always worked on the third take. It was a question of bringing Kim [Bodnia] down a hair, bringing Gael up a hair, and bringing [cinematographer] Bobby Bukowski into it where he began to feel the dance. And then letting them run,” Stewart recounted.

Of course, as a first time director, Stewart had a list of seasoned – and in some cases, Oscar-nominated – directors to call upon for help. In fact, Stewart said Kathryn Bigelow, director of Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker, was instrumental in the production of the film, as she knew the ins and outs of shooting a film in Jordan. One name Stewart kept returning to for advice was Behari, who wrote a book chronicling his ordeal upon which the film is based. “He was always the touchstone…He was a great source of authenticiy,” Stewart told Indiewire of Behari’s role on the film.

Stewart credits much of the film to Behari, who appeared alongside Stewart as part of TIFF’s “Mavericks Conversations.”

“The film doesn’t feel like I got serious,” Stewart admitted during the talk. “It feels like another way of filtering a point of view through a story.”

Rosewater will open in limited release on Nov. 7.