Pop-Culturalist.com

Scottish director Kevin Macdonald has an incredible eye for stories that grab you and don’t let go. In fact, he has the awards to prove it. His documentary One Day in September nabbed an Academy Award for Best Documentary film and two others, Touching the Void and The Last King of Scotland, garnered BAFTA Awards.

Most recently, he’s been at work on The Mauritanian. Based on Mohamedou Ould Salahi’s bestselling memoir Guantanamo Diary, the film brings to life Salahi’s fight for freedom from imprisonment at Guantanamo.

We spoke with Kevin Macdonald about creating the film, his journey to get there, and why this story is so important.

PC: You had a pivotal conversation with Mohamedou early on in the process. How did that ultimately influence your decision to be a part of this film? How did it shape the overall experience?
Kevin: When I read the book originally, I thought it was a fascinating document, but I couldn’t see how you’d turn it into a film. I also felt like there have been a lot of films about the war on terror. How do I make something that’s different? Then, I spoke to Mohamedou. It was surprising to see what he was like—he wasn’t this broken, resentful, angry individual. He’s able to forgive what happened. He’s funny. He loves movies. He’ll sing the Black Eyed Peas to you, which he did on our first call.

I thought, “What an interesting character; what a complex character.” Here is something I want to make a film about: this man. That’s really what inspired me and everybody else—the cast and the crew. This was a hard film to get made. In this day and age, it’s still incredible to me that there hasn’t been a mainstream American film with a sympathetic Muslim lead, let alone somebody who’s a man accused of terror. So, to me, that felt like an important thing to try and achieve. It’s about who is Mohamedou, but it’s also about something wider than that.

PC: What would you say is the most challenging aspect of bringing this adaption to life on the screen?
Kevin: Getting the script right was incredibly hard because the story takes place over many years. It’s full of intricate legal details that you need to simplify, but not over-simplify. You need to understand what is habeas corpus, what it means to have detention without charge. You need to understand the process that Stuart Couch, the prosecution lawyer, goes through in order to get hold of the original documentation. Why is he not given the original documentation to begin with? These things are quite technical. To incorporate that within a film was difficult. Also, to get the balance right between three characters was another challenge. Mohamdeou is at the center. You realize within the first half-hour, it’s about him. He’s the main guy.

We’re playing tricks with the genre. You start off and you feel like it’s a conventional legal thriller. You’re going to have two lawyers and you’re going to have the guy in the middle. Is he guilty? But actually, very soon you realize it’s not that. It becomes a character portrait of Mohamedou. You have three layers of time within it: you’ve got the present tense from Mohamedou, you have the recent past from when he arrived in Guantanamo until he meets Nancy, and then you’ve got the deep past, which is in flashbacks. All of those things make it really structurally complex. That was the biggest challenge.

PC: Mohamedou’s story and experience is one that spans multiple years, like you were just saying. What were the discussions surrounding the timeframe that you decided to focus upon and how the film would end?
Kevin: I had decided that I wanted to tell not just his story, but also the legal framework that he was caught in. Therefore, that included the two layers. It felt natural that I would be building up to the habeas case, which is the moment when he’s meant to be freed. The majority of the film, that’s what the lawyers are aiming for; they’re aiming to get to this court case. That’s a good thing to hold onto when you’ve got all these other complexities going on. The court case happened after seven years, basically halfway through his time of detention. We really tell the story from when he arrives in Guantanamo through those seven years.

At that point, there’s a shocking twist. We can talk about it, even though it’s a spoiler. We think he goes through the case, he wins it, and then they decided that they’re going to detain him for another seven years, arbitrarily. That felt like a really dramatic use, certainly in my own work, of a caption—you’ve finished the movie and then you have a piece of information that totally upends and shocks you. Then, of course, we do go back for a little bit longer, we jump forward seven years, and we see him finally released. We see the real Mohamedou.

PC: Can you walk us through the editing process? How challenging was it to weave those three stories together while also doing it during a lockdown?
Kevin: [laughs] Actually, doing it during a lockdown was a boon. My editor, who I’ve worked with many times before, lives very close to me here in North London. We found a cutting room nearby that we could walk to, and we became part of each other’s bubbles. We edited all the way through, without any interference, without anyone coming to the cutting room, which was quite nice, actually.

I came back at the beginning of March, and we had it pretty much locked up by August. We were meant to post at the end of August—do the sound and picture post—but I wasn’t happy with the score we had. We ended up totally re-scoring the film. Because no theaters were open, and the festivals were only a shadow of themselves, we thought we’d delay the post a bit and have it come out towards the end of the year, but of course that didn’t happen either. [laughs]

PC: The film tackles a lot of really important themes throughout. Was there one in particular that hit home for you?
Kevin: There are two vital themes. The first one sounds incredibly dry and boring, which is the importance of the rule of law and what happens when you twist the law, when you break it. What demons are unleashed by that? The second thing is the importance of humanizing the other—people who we see in a certain way and demonize, and don’t get to actually know as human beings. Because, for me, whether you believe that Mohamedou is innocent or guilty, and obviously I believe he’s innocent—there’s no evidence to say that he’s guilty—but let’s just say you’re a person who believes that there must be more evidence out there, even after fourteen years, you have to ask yourself, “Should anybody be treated like this? Even if he were guilty, should he be treated in this way? Is it right for any human being to be put through what he was put through?” I think that’s a profound human test for us all.

PC: With the film out now, what do you hope audiences take away?
Kevin: I hope they take what I just said, but also, we made the movie in a way that we hope is entertainment. We hope that you enjoy it and it’s a powerful experience. You get to see some of the best performances on screen this year by some outstanding actors who everybody knows.

PC: What was the biggest takeaway for you as a filmmaker that you learned from this experience that you’ll apply to future projects?
Kevin: I guess the thing I learned was if you have a good script and you cast amazing actors, you don’t have to do that much. [laughs]

The Mauritanian is out now in select theaters. To watch another one of Kevin’s latest films, check out Life in a Day 2020.