Gitmo: The New Rules of War

It’s a Swedish documentary about the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base by Erik Gandini and Tarik Saleh. Features interviews with Janis Karpinski, Mehdi Ghezali and Geoffrey Miller (MG), among others. Gitmo premiered at IDFA in 2005, and reached mainstream theaters in Sweden on February 10, 2006. In 2003, a year after Swedish citizen Mehdi Ghezali was detained at “Gitmo”, which sparked some media interest in Sweden, Erik and Tarik started filming the documentary and visited the base on a guided tour of selected areas.

Mehdi Ghezali was released in 2004, and was interviewed for the film. In 2006, the musical score composed by Krister Linder won first prize for music in a TV feature at the Festival international Musique et Cinéma in Auxerre, France.

In the wake of the 9/11 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States opened a prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The hundreds of prisoners believed to be detained there are not afforded prisoners of war status according to the Geneva Convention. They are labeled unlawful combatants, held indefinitely with no right to a lawyer or a trial.