Latvian-Australian journalist Peter Greste became the story when he was arrested in Cairo in 2013 on trumped-up terrorism charges with two of his Al Jazeera colleagues. In a sham trial the following year he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison, ultimately spending 400 days there. It’s no spoiler to say that director Kriv Stenders’ grittily immersive film about Greste’s story has a happy ending – Greste was returned to Australia in 2015 and freed – capping off a tense and twitchy viewing experience, where the pressure valve is released only at the very last minute.
Richard Roxburgh is in fine form as Greste, eschewing the slippery charisma he does so well (in TV shows such as Rake and Prosper) to depict the protagonist as a pragmatic but deep-thinking individual, navigating a crisis in which he’s close to powerless. At one point Greste is told by a fellow prisoner that he won’t survive “unless you’re able to make peace with yourself”. Lines like that can feel on the nose, but this moment registers, feeding into an important part of Greste’s characterisation – as a person who responds to extreme situations partly by looking inwards, analysing himself as well as his circumstances.
The Correspondent opens with Greste’s editor at Al Jazeera calling him as “things are crazy in Cairo”, asking him to “cover the desk there, just in case something breaks”.
Early shots incorporate visions of the crisis unfolding in Egypt at the time, when the political arm of Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood was ousted from power and their supporters took to the streets in violent protest. We briefly see Greste reporting on the street, in the thick of it all, but the script – adapted by Peter Duncan from Greste’s memoir The First Casualty – doesn’t dilly-dally, with authorities raiding his hotel room very early in the runtime and carting him off to prison.
Thematically (and to some extent tonally) the ensuing experience has obvious similarities to Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously and Robert Connolly’s Balibo, two other Australian films about journalists stationed overseas in terribly fraught political circumstances. There are also notes of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, with Greste and his two colleagues – producer Mohamed Fahmy (Julian Maroun) and cameraman Baher Mohamed (Rahel Romahn) – facing preposterous allegations and an obviously crooked bureaucratic system, in which the concept of guilt has nothing to do with justice, entirely defined according to the motivations of those in power.
About 20 minutes in, Stenders begins to deploy flashbacks, marking the first point where I felt pulled out of Greste’s perilous circumstances. Initially I wasn’t entirely sure about these intermittent scenes, which detail the relationship between Greste and BBC journalist Kate Peyton (Yael Stone), as it felt as if the film was sacrificing some immediacy. But rather than being pockets of the past presented here and there, they have a clear dramatic arc and the full weight of their significance is eventually revealed.
Cinematographer Geoffrey Hall (whose other collaborations with Stenders include Red Dog, Australia Day and a Wake in Fright reboot) gives the frame a coarse and grainy veneer – rough and banged up, which suits the material. As does the nervy editing of Veronika Jenet (whose work includes Jane Campion classics The Piano and Sweetie), which adds an additional element of jumpiness, as if the screen itself is being rattled. Like so many films, The Correspondent could do with a trim, feeling a little stretched in its second half. But this is unquestionably an important story, powerfully and robustly told; you’ve never seen a courtroom drama quite like it.
• The Correspondent opens in Australian cinemas on 17 April
