Actor Richard Roxburgh conveys the story of detained journalist Peter Greste in The Correspondent. Photo / John Platt
Every day, thousands of journalists around the world sit languishing in foreign prison cells for the simple act of doing their job. Peter Greste was one of those people.
The Australian former Al Jazeera journalist’s inspiring, yet harrowing story of perseverance and reflection hits Kiwi cinemas today in the new film The Correspondent. Mitchell Hageman hears why it’s more relevant than ever.
Dark, damp, claustrophobic environments pollute the screen in director Kriv Stenders’ exploration of human will and bravery.
Starring Australian screen legend Richard Roxburgh, The Correspondent is based on Peter Greste’s biographical novel and depicts his detention in Egyptian jails after his arrest in 2013 while reporting on the country’s current events.
His short Christmas break covering for a colleague soon turned into a roughly 400-day ordeal that tested the boundaries of political relations and press freedom.
A trial - which was widely labelled by foreign media as a sham - found Greste and his fellow ground team accused of news reporting that was “damaging to national security”, as well as meeting the (terrorist-listed by Egypt) Muslim Brotherhood, and funding their work from his Cairo hotel room.
Eventually released after political pressure, Greste was officially deported to Australia on the condition that he face prison or trial in his home country - something Australia did not follow through on.
But while it may sound straightforward to some, this is much more than a simple ‘jailed for journalism’ story.
It’s about finding peace and standing up for your beliefs despite all odds being against you, something Greste and Roxburgh both agree is paramount in a world where journalists are often under threat.
“The book was really built around what I saw as the wider war on journalism,” Greste tells the Herald. He recalls how the 9/11 attacks in the United States prompted governments to start using the term ‘war on terror’, and to go after “uncomfortable” journalism.
“We’ve seen that all over the world. What happened to us in Egypt was a particularly egregious example of that.”
Greste admits that he thought the further time passed from 9/11, the less relevant those ideas around journalism would become.
“I thought that the rhetoric would start to get old, that journalism would recover its place, and that we’d move on from that current crisis.”
But as he points out, a record number of journalists remain dead and missing, and he believes America’s home of free speech has turned a dark corner.
“We’re seeing Donald Trump attacking journalism, banning news organisations that he doesn’t like from the White House,” he notes.
“All of these are just extraordinary shifts, so I guess in ways that I don’t think I ever really anticipated and certainly could never have wanted, this [film] feels more relevant than ever before.”
Roxburgh, who had previously said he didn’t want to mimic Greste but craft a realistic portrayal of his mindset, agrees.
“If anything, playing this role has really drawn me so much closer to the plight and the experience of journalists and what the hell has happened on the planet in the last two decades.”
He found himself “in real shock” at the attack on truth-telling all around the world, and the fact that journalists were a “targeted species everywhere you look”.
It was “keeping to himself” that helped Roxburgh convey a sense of solidarity needed to tell the story in the right way.
“I didn’t hang out with everybody at lunchtime, and I did a lot of things that were uncharacteristic. I thought the only way that I can get there is from a very quiet, neutral place,” he said.
“Luckily, a lot of the places we were filming in were pretty dank and grim, which certainly helped as well.”
The film also touches on another part of Greste’s story that he “hasn’t really dealt with publicly”: the death of close friend and BBC journalist Kate Peyton.
Peyton was fatally shot while reporting alongside Greste in Somalia, and the film flashes back to this numerous times while chronicling Greste’s imprisonment.
“I haven’t spoken about it to anywhere near the same extent [as the imprisonment] so it was a much tougher thing to watch,” Greste admitted.
“This movie does actually take Kate’s story and treat it with a great deal of respect and empathy. It gave significance and meaning, and weight to her death in a way that I haven’t really been able to do myself.”
Dealing with grief and stress is something Greste said he became accustomed to during his imprisonment, finding solace in previously learned meditation practices and also through religion.
“I remember thinking, well, I’ve got the tools for this, I’ve been here before, and so I think that was undoubtedly a real help. But I also want to emphasise that, I think it was Allah who helped me understand. I think that’s articulated in the story as well.”
He also cited a particular book that helped him gain understanding, further helping him clarify his mindset during the ordeal.
“There’s a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a survivor of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany. One of the things he said in his book was, quoting Nietzsche, ‘he who has a why can bear anyhow’.
“In other words, as long as you’ve got a reason for the suffering that you’re enduring, you can put up with pretty much anything. I recognised that we were fighting for something much bigger than ourselves; for the institution of press freedom.”
Both Roxburgh and Greste hope the film becomes a talking point for wider discussions around journalism, society, and the impact of humanised storytelling.
“It prompts conversations around what the hell is going on with journalists and journalism now. The more people are thinking about that, and discussing it, I think that’s a great thing,” Roxburgh says.
“The other thing Rox and I have spoken about a bit too, is that there’s a tendency for us in the West to kind of flatten out Muslims as the evil characters in these narratives. It was always really important for me for the movie to break open some of those classic tropes,” Greste says.
“I came to regard a lot of the guards as much as prisoners of the system as we were, and some of the most extraordinary humans that I’ve ever come across were in the prison cell in Egypt.
“I hope people come away from it again thinking a little bit more deeply about the way in which those relationships develop.”
The Correspondent premieres in NZ cinemas today.
Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald’s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke’s Bay Today.
The famed circus company was last here in 2023 with its icy spectacle Crystal.