New Aussie film The Correspondent is an extraordinary retelling of Peter Greste’s story
- Written by: Andrea Jean Baker, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Monash University
The Correspondent is a film every journalist should see.
There are no spoiler alerts. It is based on the globally-publicised jailing in Cairo in 2013 of Australian journalist Peter Greste (played by Richard Roxburgh) and his Al Jazeera English colleagues, Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy (Julian Maroun) and local reporter Baher Mohamed (Rahel Romahn).
The trio were jailed for over 400 days. They were accused of allegedly working without media accreditation, spreading fake news in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and associating with the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
Skilfully directed by Kriv Stenders, The Correspondent follows Greste’s 2017 memoir. Roxburgh’s performance as the embattled journalist is breathtaking and career defining. With a tight screenplay by Peter Duncan, the film is a masterclass in political subtlety.
Authenticity in truth telling
At its world premiere at Adelaide Film Festival in October, Greste said The Correspondent “paid huge respect” to his memoir.
The film begins with Greste’s surprise arrest in 2013 by Egyptian authorities at the Marriott hotel in Cairo. This is juxtaposed with historical snippets of the Arab Spring uprising in Tahrir Square in January 2011, which ended the 30-year dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak.
The next president after Mubarak was Mohamed Morsi, leader of the Freedom and Justice Party. This party was affiliated with the Brotherhood, the country’s oldest and largest Islamist organisation.
In June 2013, a militarised coup d'état in Egypt was led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime. Morsi was jailed by the freshly minted President al-Sisi. By December, the Brotherhood was blacklisted and declared a terrorist organisation.
The Correspondent argues the Al Jazeera English journalists were political pawns for the new Egyptian regime. The regime had a problematic relationship with its wealthy neighbour, Qatar, a country that partially funds Al Jazeera and publicly supported the Muslim Brotherhood.
Working from a media bunker in the Marriott because their offices were subject to a series of raids and closed down by local police, the trio were accused of illegally mastering a grand conspiracy against al-Sisi’s authoritarian regime.
Struggle for justice and risky business
Set between the grimy underworld of the Egyptian jail and the endless circus of Egyptian court trials, The Correspondent is a look into the psychological torment of Greste and his colleagues.
Between card playing, sarcastic humour and planned hunger strikes, the ritual reality of cell life sets in. Friendships are tested and forged between the journalists, student activist detainees and prison authorities.
Greste spent decades writing headlines from conflict zones before becoming a headline himself.
A repetitive motif in The Correspondent is Greste’s flashbacks to his BBC days during 2005 in Mogadishu, Somalia, where his producer Kate Peyton (Yael Stone) was killed outside the Sahafi Hotel. In these flashbacks, we are privy to Greste’s guilt-driven internal monologues.
In three studies, I examined the reportage by the ABC, the BBC and the Al Jazeera network about Greste’s case. Across these publications, the safety of journalists received minimal coverage.
Coverage focused on the innocence of the trio, impact of Greste’s sentencing on his ageing parents and press freedom. All these facets of the story are reflected in The Correspondent.
Safety of journalists
The Correspondent is a wake-up call about the safety of journalists.
This month, the International Federation of Journalists said at least 156 journalists and media workers have been killed in the current war in Palestine. In December, the Committee to Protect Journalists put the number at more than 137, “making it the deadliest period for journalists since [the committee] began gathering data in 1992”.
Imprisonment of a Western foreign correspondent often generates international headlines, but most journalists who are imprisoned are local journalists. Foreign correspondents rely on these local journalists, wrote Greste, “when they land in a new, dangerous environment”.
Local journalists hold power to account, as Greste describes it in “ways far more dangerous than any of us in more secure environments could possibly imagine”.
In focusing tightly on Greste’s story, The Correspondent fails to shine a light on the dozens of local journalists imprisoned at the same time.
As Greste said during the #FreeAJStaff campaign:
Rarely have so many of us been imprisoned and beaten up, intimidated or murdered in the course of our duties.
The Correspondent is an extraordinary film about human resilience and the importance of global diplomacy in the ongoing fight for press freedom.
The Correspondent is in cinemas from today.
Authors: Andrea Jean Baker, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Monash University
