Product Details

• Actors: Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun, Shahid Iqbal, Waqar Siddiqui, Arfan Usman
• Directors: Mat Whitecross, Michael Winterbottom
• Producers: Michael Winterbottom, Andrew Eaton, Lee Thomas, Melissa Parmenter, Michael Elliott
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click .
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: October 24, 2006
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000HOL67U
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,468 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "The Road to Guantanamo" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

After Welcome to Sarajevo and In This World, The Road to Guantánamo is Michael Winterbottom's most important film. Along with United 93, it's one of the most important films released by anyone in 2006. In the docudrama, which was produced for British television, Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross recount the travails of the Tipton Three, a trio of Britons detained for two years at Guantánamo Bay. How did these apolitical Muslims end up as suspected terrorists? The directors attempt to answer that question by inter-cutting interviews and news footage with recreations of their Kafka-esque journey. It starts with a trip to Pakistan for the wedding of Asif (Afran Usman). In short order, he's joined by Ruhel (Farhad Harun), Shafiq (Riz Ahmed), and Monir (Waqar Siddiqui). On a whim, they decide to visit Afghanistan: "One, for experience, and two, to help." It proves to be their undoing. First, they're caught in a bombing raid; then the Northern Alliance rounds them up as members of al-Qaeda. In the mêlée, Monir goes missing. The remaining three are shipped to Cuba, where US officials stop at nothing to coerce confessions. There’s a hard-won happy ending, but it isn't easy to watch--Alan Parker's Ollie Stone-penned Midnight Express seems downright lyrical in comparison. Further, the acting is inconsistent and the character development is sketchy. Those flaws aside, The Road to Guantánamo is powerful and provocative stuff. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Product Description

The Road to Guantanamo is a terrifying first-hand account of three young men, British nationals of Muslim faith who were held for two years without charges in the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Known as the 'Tipton Three,' in reference to their home town in Britain, the three were eventually returned to Britain and released, still having had no formal charges ever made against them at any time during their ordeal.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How Much Will We Pay For Our Freedoms? November 3, 2006

By B. Merritt VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

How much is too much when considering the price of our freedoms and liberties? Do all people, regardless of race, creed, sex, ethnicity, or political affiliation, deserve legal representation? Watch THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO and then ask yourself these questions.

The Road to Guantanamo is about a group of friends known as The Tipton Three, Middle Eastern men who live in England and decide to travel to Pakistan where one of them plans to be wedded. Although they start out as four, one quickly disappears as they travel across the border into Afghanistan on a roadtrip. Unfortunately for them, this was right at the time the U.S. began its battle with the Taliban. Bombs drop around Shafiq, Ruhel, Monir, and Asif, the young men who start out on this hellish journey. They quickly try to get away but are led into even more dangerous areas by suspicious men with guns who lock them up in cargo trucks or force them to trek into the desert. Soon, U.S. and British forces arrive and take Shafiq, Ruhel, and Asif into custody. The whereabouts of Monir are never discovered. His body is never found.

Filmed using actors and the original Tipton three, the documentary is a disturbing treatise on prisoners of war. That we see the bizarre circumstances leading to their "arrest" and incarceration is even more disturbing considering these men were officially residents of England. But because they have Middle Eastern blood in their veins, they are immediately labeled as terrorists or Taliban fighters or (unbelievably) Al Qaeda.

The road that The Three travel is horrifying. Death hits near them on every stretch, nearly killing one or all of them at some point; whether its dysentery, Allied bombs, or torture....

It is this last that we become painfully aware of as The Three enter Cuba and the "Gitmo" detention center. Never having been charged with a single crime, nor having evidence against them, the U.S. forces continually inflict terrible pains on the men. Isolation. Loud music for hours and hours. Sitting in the scalding heat day in and day out. Being knocked down time and again during interrogations when they don't give the interrogators the information they "want to hear."

Held for a little over two years, The Three are finally released without charges and returned to England. No apologies. No legal recourse. Nothing is available to them.

All of this sounds completely un-American and cruel. And it is. But there are some interesting points hit upon in the documentary that are simply left dangling, leaving it up to the audience to decide what they mean. Most importantly is that there's really no explanation as to why The Three decided to go into Afghanistan in the first place. They just do. One might assume that they did it as a kind of fun roadtrip that went terribly awry. But this isn't stated outright.

Still, the cost of freedom is implicitly felt throughout the film as the audience watches these men denied any sort of legal representation and then subjected to torture techniques that skim the legalities of The Geneva Convention. Read more ›

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Never to be forgoten September 15, 2006

By Reyadh Ahmed Khamis

Format:DVD

By now, I must have seen thousands of movies, Most of them faded away during time, but there are some great movies that you will never forget.

The Road To Guantanamo is one of those movies that will linger in your memory for a long time to come.

It will leave you shocked, it will make to think about the world we live in, the society, the culture and mostly the big events happening in during our life?

This is a documentary movie, set in our past and current time and I assure you that every time you watch the news, there will be something linking to this movie for many years to come.

Update:

How much truth is in this film? Please read this peice of news article published on 19th sep 2006.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A Saudi has been held in solitary confinement for a year at the Guantanamo Bay prison and is now so mentally unbalanced he considers insects his friends, lawyers said in a motion filed Monday seeking the man's removal from isolation.

Shaker Aamer, a 37-year-old resident of Britain, was placed in isolated confinement Sept. 24, 2005, and has been beaten by guards, deprived of sleep and subjected to temperature extremes, according to the motion filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The treatment violates Geneva Conventions protections, Aamer's lawyers argued. The U.S. military denied he is being mistreated.

"They choked him," the lawyer said. "They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. ... They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed.... When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out." Read more ›

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Abrogation of Human Rights and Due Process. May 14, 2007

By mirasreviews HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

"The Road to Guantanamo" tells the story of "The Tipton Three", three young British men who were held in U.S. custody for 2 years, first in Afghanistan and later in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, accused of being supporters of Al Qaeda. Asif Iqbal, Ruhel Ahmed, and Shafiq Rasul had traveled to Pakistan for Asif's wedding. On a lark, the group foolishly took a trip to Afghanistan at the worst possible time: October 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan following the attacks of September 11. Caught in the bloody melee of bombings and Taliban resistance, the men ended up among Taliban fighters as they tried to return to Pakistan. The threesome were arrested by the Northern Alliance, which turned them over to the U.S. military. Initially relieved to be in U.S. custody, they soon found that the Americans were determined to find them guilty of being jihadists. And if evidence was lacking, their captors were willing to coerce confessions.

The story is told through interviews with Asif, Ruhel, and Shafiq and through re-enactments of their experiences, where the men are played by actors. Michael Winterbottom directed this film, which initially struck me as not being as polished as his fiction films. But, upon reflection, the recreations of the bloodshed in Afghanistan and life for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are fairly meticulous and expert. Winterbottom undoubtedly did not want to give the impression of polish or contrivance, but of immediacy and realism in depicting the ordeal these three men suffered. The men were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay from January 2002 to March 2004, first at "Camp X-Ray" and then at "Camp Delta".... I'm inclined to believe their accounts of their experiences there, as the descriptions are similar to those related by other former Guantanamo and "black site" detainees.

The men were tortured, deprived of sleep, and, for months, not allowed to stand or walk more than 5 minutes per week. This is not news, though this film offers more detail of the treatment of detainees than I've read in print. The strategies and apparent motivations of the American interrogators might be more damning. Military officers charged with finding "bad people" and eliciting information are under a lot of pressure to produce results. So they pass even unlikely culprits up the chain of command, until the prisoners get to Guantanamo Bay, by which time it should be painfully obvious that they don't possess useful information. Asking the same question for 2 years is unlikely to produce a different answer. In a pitiful effort to find "The Tipton Three" guilty of something, the U.S. claimed to have photographs placing them at an Al Qaeda rally in Afghanistan in 2000, a time for which the men had easily verifiable alibis. But that didn't stop their captors from torturing a confession out of them.

We can only be grateful that Asif, Ruhel, and Shafiq did not sustain long-term injury from the abominable treatment they endured. Egyptian President Nasser's imprisonment and torture of Muslim Brotherhood partisans in the 1960s, whether or not they had committed any crime, galvanized their contempt of secular government and the West. These Westernized Pakistani Brits from Tipton have become more observant Muslims as a result of their ordeal. I don't suppose that they or the other 750 men who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay are feeling a lot of love for the United States right now. There are no bonus features on the DVD (Sony 2006). Subtitles available in English. Read more ›