Michael Winterbottom on The Road To Guantánamo

Michael Winterbottom is a greedy man. Not satisfied with being good at making films in one genre, his canon takes in everything from comedy to tragedy, via erotica, sci-fi and music biopic.

He and his business partner, producer Andrew Eaton, have followed up their recent uproarious comedy, A Cock And Bull Story, with a film different in almost every way imaginable. The Road To Guantánamo is a brutally compelling portrayal of how three British Muslims were captured in Afghanistan and ended up imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay for over two years. Filmed on a limited budget, starring a raft of talented newcomers and shot on location in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, it is both a powerful indictment of an illegal and indefensible internment policy and, bizarrely, a white-knuckle boys'-own adventure.

Taking time out from his busy schedule Winterbottom explains how the idea for the project developed, why it has been made a certain way, and what it was like to travel down The Road To Guantánamo.

Your films take in an extraordinary variety of subject material. What attracted you to this project?
We'd heard about the Tipton Three from the news, and read about them in the papers. So we got in contact with Gareth Pierce, who was their lawyer, to arrange a meeting. We met Gareth and the boys at the same time, and luckily they were interested in the idea of telling us their story.

What was it like talking to the three of them about their experiences? Was it traumatic?
What was fascinating about the way they described the experience was that two of them were teenagers when they left, and one of them was 21, and none of them were particularly religious before they left or particularly political, even when they were talking about it with us, after the event. So what was interesting about the story was that it was about three ordinary, normal people who got caught up in this extraordinary story. And when they described it, it was in a very matter-of-fact way, like someone telling you about their holiday, the holiday from hell.

Next page • "We were told that the people in Guantánamo were the most dangerous terrorists in the world"