Jon Stewart and Maziar Bahari screen new film “Rosewater” in Berkeley

Rosewater is based on Iranian-born journalist Maziar Bahari’s 2011 memoir Then They Came for Me, which recounts Bahari’s 118-day detention after covering Iran’s 2009 presidential election for Newsweek. Prior to his arrest, Bahari participated in a Daily Show segment, which his captors later used as proof that he was plotting a revolution against the Iranian government.

Feeling partially responsible for Bahari’s four-month imprisonment, Stewart took a 12-week hiatus from hosting The Daily Show to try his hand at screenwriting and directing. Stewart adapted Bahari’s memoir into Rosewater, taking the title from the nickname Bahari gave his strongly perfumed interrogator.

In his opening remarks, Dean Ed Wasserman said he was glad to call Stewart a journalist because of his ability to deliver news and commentary on some of the world’s most pressing issues to a large audience that otherwise might not be bothered to open a newspaper.

The film stars Gael GarcÌ_a Bernal as Bahari, and most of it is set in Tehran’s Evin Prison, where Bahari was held in solitary confinement. Stewart explained that the audience is expecting violence, but physical violence is actually an anomaly in the film. “To me, the banality of solitary confinement is the torture.”

During his captivity, The Daily Show and other media outlets kept Bahari’s story alive, and he was later released on bail. After he was freed, Stewart invited Bahari on the show to describe the ordeal.

His story is not unique, Bahari reminded the J-School community. “There are so many journalists — hundreds of journalists — in Iran who are going through the same thing, every day.”

After the screening, Stewart and Bahari joined J-School professor Mark Danner on stage for a conversation about the film. Danner, a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, has written widely on U.S. foreign policy and the use of torture.

Asked if he had advice for aspiring filmmakers, Stewart joked that they should follow his formula: “Get your own show. Have some people arrested who appear on it, and then befriend them. It’s really quite simple.”

Rosewater will be released in theaters on Nov. 14.