Trinity Theatre are partnering with Tunbridge Wells Amnesty Group for a special screening of legal drama The Mauritanian, accompanied by a live Q&A session. On the panel will be Mohamedou Ould Slahi himself, who the film was based on, Nancy Hollander, the lawyer who got Slahi out of Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the film’s director Kevin Macdonald and investigative journalist and Guantanamo expert, Andy Worthington. Showing for one night only on 20th March, this fascinating event will give viewers a rare and exclusive insight into the real story behind this award-winning legal drama that gripped the world.
The Mauritanian is directed by Kevin Macdonald and based on the New York Times best-selling memoir Guantánamo Diary, a first-hand account by Mohamedou Ould Slahi. This is the inspiring true story of Slahi’s fight for freedom after being detained and imprisoned without charge by the U.S. Government for years. In 2001, while living in his home country Mauritania, Slahi was detained and renditioned to a black site in Jordan. He was then transported to Guantanamo Bay via Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan and held and tortured for 15 years without charge. Slahi kept a diary during this time, which remained classified for almost eight years, until it was published as Guantanamo Diary in 2015. The book became an international beststeller, translated into 25 languages and made into the film The Mauritanian in 2021. Mohamedou Ould Slahi will sit on this panel to speak about his experience.
Nancy Hollander, the criminal lawyer that successfully fought for Sahil’s release, will bring her four decades of specialist experience fighting national security cases to this live panel, as well as her personal account of working on Slahi’s illustrious case. A multi-award winning international lawyer, including being named among the National Law Journal’s top 50 Women Litigators and the first woman president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Ms. Holland’s participation in this panel will bring fascintating insights from her expertise as well as the process of releasing Slahi’s story as a New York Times-bestselling book.
Investigative journalist, author and campaigner Andy Worthington will appear beside these notable speakers. Recognised as an authority on Guantanamo and the ’war on terror’, Worthington has been telling the stories of men held in the prison since 2006. Campaigning for its closure and co-founding several human rights campaigns, Worthington has also partnered with WikiLeaks to release classified files from Guatanamo and written reports for the United Nations on secret detention.
The director of The Mauritanian, Kevin Macdonald, will draw out how he brought Slahi’s story to the screen. An Oscar-winning feature and documentary film director, Macdonald has worked on human rights films like One Day in September, a documentary about the 1972 murder of eleven Israeli athletes, which won him the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The Mauritanian follows Slahi (Tahar Rahim), alone and afraid, who finds allies in defense attorney Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) and her associate Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley). Together they battle the U.S. government in a fight for justice that tests their commitment to the law and their client at every turn. Their controversial advocacy, along with evidence uncovered by a formidable military prosecutor, Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), uncovers shocking truths and ultimately proves that the human spirit cannot be locked up. At the 78th Golden Globe Awards, The Mauritanian received two nominations; Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama (for Rahim), with Foster winning Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture. At the 74th British Academy Film Awards, the film received five nominations, including Best Film, Outstanding British Film, and Best Actor (for Rahim).
“Guantanamo? Is that still open?” Americans ask this all the time. And the answer is yes. It was 20 years old in January 2022. And there are still 38 men imprisoned without trial. How do we finally close this “patient zero” of the human rights abuses that began after 9/11? How can ordinary Americans be persuaded to talk civil liberties when it comes to the prisoners left? How do we discuss the legal complexities, the international self-defeat, and the humanity of “Bad Dudes”? It’s too big for a slogan. You need a Hollywood blockbuster. Amnesty International.
Nancy Hollander
Nancy Hollander is an internationally recognized US criminal defense lawyer. She is also an Associate Tenant at London’s Doughty Street Chambers and Of Counsel to the Geneva firm of Savolainen Avocats. Ms. Hollander has been admitted to practice in the US Supreme Court, federal, state and military courts. She is also on the list of counsel for the ICC as well as the DOJ Pool of Qualified Civilian Defense Counsel for Military Commissions. For more than four decades, Ms. Hollander’s practice has largely been devoted to representing individuals and organizations accused of crimes, including those involving national security issues, in trial and on appeal. She was lead appellate counsel for Chelsea Manning and she won Ms. Manning’s release in 2017, when President Obama commuted her sentence from thirty-seven to seven years. Ms. Hollander has also represented two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and in 2016, she won the release of one of them – Mohamedou Ould Slahi – who had been incarcerated for 14 years without charge. In addition to her criminal defense practice, Ms. Hollander has been counsel in civil cases, forfeitures, and administrative hearings, and she has argued and won an historic case involving religious freedom in the US Supreme Court. Ms. Hollander has also served as a consultant to the defense in international cases. She has taught in numerous trial practice programs in the US and internationally. She has also written extensively and conducted more than 200 seminars and presentations around the globe on various subjects, including the securing of evidence in international cases, forfeiture, illegal search and seizure, expert witnesses, defense of child abuse cases, ethics, evidence, and trial practice. Ms. Hollander has also received many professional awards. Among them, in 2001, she was named as one of America’s top 50 women litigators by the National Law Journal in 2001 and was appointed the first woman president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Andy Worthington
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantanamo Files (2007), the co-director of the documentary film Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo (2009), and the co-founder of the Close Guantanamo campaign, established in 2012. He was also the co-founder of We Stand With Shaker, a campaign that helped to secure the release of the last UK resident in Guantanamo in 2015. Recognised as an authority on Guantanamo, he has written for the New York Times, the Guardian and Al-Jazeera.
Kevin Macdonald
Kevin Macdonald is an Oscar-winning feature and documentary film director. His films include the climbing documentary Touching the Void, the historical drama The Last King of Scotland and Life in a Day with Executive Producer Ridley Scott. A partnership between YouTube, RSA Films, and LG electronics, Life in a Day was a crowd-sourced documentary feature that told the story of one single ordinary day, with scenes selected from over 80,000 submissions.
Trinity Theatre
Trinity Theatre is a vibrant arts venue in the centre of Tunbridge Wells, welcoming 90,000 people a year through the doors of a converted Decimus Burton church for a range of the arts, music, dance, film and comedy. Alongside our artistic programme and art gallery, we are incredibly proud of our community output, from our Speech Bubbles work with local schools to our Senior Cinema scheme for older, socially isolated people.
