The Oscar-winning director on his new real-life tale about a Guantánamo Bay detainee, his fears for the future of cinema, and turning the spotlight on Oprah
Kevin Macdonald, a 53-year-old Scot, is a rare director equally at home in factual and feature films. His documentaries have included 2018’s Whitney, the climbing epic Touching the Void and One Day in September, an account of the terrorist attack on the
Israeli team at the 1972 Olympics, which won an Oscar in 2000. On the dramatic side, he has made 2006’s The Last King of
Scotland and now The Mauritanian, which tells the story of Mohamedou Ould Salahi, an electrical engineer, played in the film by Tahar Rahim, who spent 14 years in Guantánamo Bay detention camp from 2002 to 2016 without ever being charged.
When you were approached about making The Mauritanian, you weren’t sure it was right for you. What changed?Very simply, I spoke to Mohamedou. When I was first given his book, I couldn’t see how to make a film out of it that would be different than anything else that had been done about the war on terror. But within two minutes of speaking to him, he’s laughing and joking, and quoting The Big Lebowski, his favourite movie. And I was just so struck by his positivity and his wisdom about what had happened to him and his lack of resentment. He says – and he really means it – that he would love to sit down and have a cup of tea with the people who tortured him. He’s got this superpower of empathy.