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'Rosewater' trailer offers first look at Jon Stewart's directorial debut

A year after Jon Stewart took summer leave from “The Daily Show” to direct the movie “Rosewater,” the official trailer for the highly anticipated drama has arrived online.Starring Gael García Bernal, the film is based on the true story of Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was jailed for almost four months on espionage charges.In the trailer, the imprisoned Bahari is blindfolded, inter
Image: "Rosewater" trailer
YouTube

A year after Jon Stewart took summer leave from “The Daily Show” to direct the movie “Rosewater,” the official trailer for the highly anticipated drama has arrived online.

Starring Gael García Bernal, the film is based on the true story of Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari, who was jailed for almost four months on espionage charges.

In the trailer, the imprisoned Bahari is blindfolded, interrogated and threatened by his jailer, who contends, “Your wife will never see you again. Your child? Your child will never know you.”

Stewart was no stranger to the story when he took on the project. For a 2009 "Daily Show" segment, correspondent Jason Jones pretended to be a spy in Iran, where he interviewed Bahari, who’d been covering the country’s presidential election between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Arrested nine days after that election, Bahari was told his participation in that "Daily Show" segment was an act of treason.

In addition to directing his first movie, Stewart also helped Bahari and fellow screenwriter Aimee Molloy adapt the screenplay from the journalist’s book, “Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival."

Scott Foundas of Variety has called the film “alternately somber and darkly funny,” adding, “Stewart’s confident, superbly acted debut feature works as both a stirring account of human endurance and a topical reminder of the risks faced by journalists in pursuit of the truth.”

Rosewater is slated for a Nov. 7 release.

Follow TODAY.com writer Chris Serico on Twitter.