April 12, 2025 • 17 mins
In December 2013, Australian journalist Peter Greste was arrested in Egypt and charged with aiding a terrorist organisation.
What followed was 400 days of incarceration, solitary confinement, interrogations, a politically motivated trial and complete uncertainty in a corrupt legal system.
Peter’s story and fight for freedom has been turned into a film, The Correspondent, staring veteran Australian actor Richard Roxburgh.
"It felt like it was an even more urgent story to tell - the simple fact is, journalists used to be protected by the Geneva Convention and they're now regarded as fair game in theatres of war, and also in the White House now."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks AB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In December twenty thirteen, Australian journalist Peter Grester was arrested
in Egypt, charged with aiding a terrorist organization. What followed
was four hundred days of incarcerations, solitary confinement, interrogations, a
politically motivated trial, and completely complete uncertainty in a corrupt
legal system. Peter's story and fight for freedom has been
(00:34):
turned into a film. It's starring Aussie actor Richard Rocksborough.
The film was called The Correspondent and joining me now
is Peter grest and the man who plays him on
the big screen, Richard Rocksborough. Lovely to have you both
with us.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thanks Francesca.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Peter. Maybe you can start by setting the scene for us.
It's twenty and thirteen. You're in Cairo. You've been sent
there to cover holiday leave for a fellow Al Jazeera journalist,
and pretty quickly things start to go bad.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, that's right. We were covering the unfolding political crisis
between rival groups, supporters of the Old Muslim Brotherhood, the
government that had been ousted about six months earlier, and
the supporters of the interim administration that was trying to
set up fresh elections, And yeah, I was doing what
I'd considered to be pretty vanilla journalism, nothing overly controversial, because,
(01:25):
as you said, I was only filling in and I
didn't really know the politics of the country that well,
so it was just fairly routine stuff. And there was
a knock on the door December twenty eighth of twenty thirteen,
and opened the door and rushed a whole bunch of
very burly Egyptian security guards or security officers, playing clothed,
(01:49):
but it was pretty clear that they were moving with
the kind of professionalism that officials you'd expect officials to have,
and they marched me off, placed me under a rest,
and very quickly learned that I was facing some very
very serious terrorism charges.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Richard, what did you know of Peter's story? Can you
remember this?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Yeah, look, I followed it really closely. Australia kind of
stood to attention when this happened. I don't think Peter
himself realized how front and center the story was in
Australia at the time. It just seemed so bizarre to
everybody that you know, a known respected foreign correspondent whose
(02:27):
face we'd seen in reports across time, had suddenly been
dragged off the streets for doing his job essentially, and
was then charged and was then in prison for seven
years on terrorism charges. It seemed so, it seemed so
outrageous and bizarre, and it was certainly a big part
(02:49):
of the Australian conversation at the time.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I imagine it was. You know, Peter, it is
such an incredible story. I mean, you were accused of
financing and aiding a terrorist organization. It was mind boggling
and also extremely serious. So how do you when those
early days and weeks and months get your hit around
finding yourself in a situation like this.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Initially I couldn't. I mean, you know, I'd never done
anything like this before. I hadn't been through it. I
didn't really quite understand what was going on. And there's
a guy that appears makes a cameo in the movie,
a guy called it la abdul Fata, who had been
an extraordinary, wonderful, intelligent humanitarian and pro democracy activist, and
(03:39):
regrettably he had been imprisoned by most of the regimes
in Egypt at the time because he was a wonderfully
charismatic figure who had the capacity to really mobilize people.
But he also schooled me in the dark arts I
suppose of surviving prison. He made it. He helped me
understand that prison first and foremost, even though we initially
(04:00):
focus on the physical confinement, on the bars and the
walls and the doors and so on, it's actually a
psychological problem. And once I understood that, once he gave
me the tools to cope, I found it so much
easier to manage.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Because was it him that told you that there is
no place for self pity in present?
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
And he's still in prison, by the way. I've just
come back from a hunger strike earlier this year to
support his mother, who's also striking to try and get
him released.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So, Richard, how do you get your hit around a
character like this? I suppose? Also my first question to
you is what was it about the story Peter's story
that drew you to really wanting to play him?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Well, I guess, as I was saying, it was such
a kind of it was such a shock to Australia
at the time that this had actually happened, So it
was an important story in that context. But given what's
happened to journalists and journalism since that time, it felt
(05:04):
like it was a you know, it was an even
more urgent story to tell the simple fact that the
journalists used to be protected by the Geneva Convention and
there now regarded as fair.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Game in.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Theaters of war. But also that you know in the
White House now that the Press Corps is chosen by
the government for the first time. There are all of
these things that are happening to journalism that are really
potent and quite scary encroachments on what used to be
a pretty straightforward thing that people accepted. So I guess
(05:47):
I felt that it was a really urgent and important
story to get involved.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
With, and quite a responsibility in a sense. I mean,
was it a daunting role to take on?
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Totally totally, because you know, I had such respect for
Peter in his work, and it's not something you take
on lightly playing something some playing a character who's a
real human being. Luckily, in this instance, Peter has been
such a supporter of the project from the get go,
(06:20):
so from the very first read through he was there
and I was able to obviously, apart from do the
sneaky actors work of kind of you know, checking out
his every move and the way that he was and
the secret sly things that actors take away and put
in their pocket. It was also just knowing that I
(06:41):
could talk to him freely and that he would help
me out if need be, and I could pester to
him with irritating little questions along the way.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Because Richard, I know that you know, when playing a
real life character, some actors like to meet the person
they're portraying. Others don't. They do their research in other ways.
So clearly it was very helpful in this particular situation
to have Peter around. Is that the way you would normally.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Work well, it really depends on this situation. I mean,
I've played real life characters, some of them very much
in the public eye in the past.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
In this particular.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Case, though, in conversations with the directory, it became really
clear that we didn't want to do a kind of
impersonation of Peter, that that was not where the relevancy
of this story lay. That it was much more going
to be about trying to occupy the internal space of
what that person went through in that environment. So that
(07:43):
once the kind of impediment of having to look like
be like, act like Peter was taken away. It felt
like it was safer was it was safer terrain for
all of us because the film also is oddly it's
a POV film, so it's all new. Yeah, apologies to everybody,
(08:07):
but it's it's one hundred percent. I mean every single
frame which I which was also unexplored territory for me.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I think I was three quarters of the way through
and I thought, I don't think I've seen a scene
without Richard.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
And it yet.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
No, no, no, no, you don't need to apologize. You
don't need to apologize. But I did think to myself, gosh,
this was an exhausting shoot.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah, it's one of the things that I actually took.
It was hugely gratified by that approach too, I have
to say, because it meant that I was also absolved
in having to worry about whether he'd got my walk
right or some verbal tick of mine right that you know,
he was he was embodying the experience rather than me
as an individual, and that was that was made it
(08:50):
a lot easier, I think, to watch and also to
work with him.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Did you notice, though Richard watching you sort of slyly
out of the corner of his eye when your first
do you think he is keeping a close eye on me?
Tell me, Peter, what did you What was it like
to sit and watch your story on the big.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Screen, strangely discombobulating. Like I've spoken about this a lot,
I've actually built a career on being on what I
went through in Egypt. I've written about it. I've given
countless speeches and interviews about it. So a lot of
that is kind of downstream processing. It's actually sort of
(09:28):
ongoing therapy, if you like, by applying meaning and significance
to what to the experience we went through. And so
I thought I knew it inside and out, but watching
Rock's on screen, watching the film on screen for the
first time was really through me because I didn't anticipate
that they would nail the experience. The kind of disorientation
(09:52):
of the arrest, the confusion and claustrophobia of confinement, that
loss of agency, the loss of control, all of those
things were really really deeply in bad in the core
of this film, and so to see that and be
drawn right back there was really really made me feel
(10:13):
a little bit punch drunk. After I walked out of
the cinema for the first time.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
What really struck me was just how incredibly powerless you were.
You know, like the Australian embassy would come and see
you and they would say to you, oh, look, there's
an official process to go through. Al Jazia would send
you a lawyer, but they would then be arrested for treason.
It felt like no one else could see how utterly
ridiculous you know, what was happening to you was.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, it certainly felt that way. I mean, I think
a lot of people could see how ridiculous it was,
which is one of the reasons it'd got such enormous
global outrage. But you know, when you're in the middle
of that maelstrom, you really have to submit to the
fact that you really are out of control, and that
you've got to accept the reality of the thing that
(10:57):
you're confronting, rather than the fantasy of what you'd like
it to be. It's a difficult thing to be involved with.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
How has it impacted you, Peter, and how you went
on to continue to do your work?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Well, it buggered my career. I'm still a convicted terrorist,
I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve and
that those are things that are pretty difficult to have
when you're to carry when you're trying to work as
a correspondent. In the end, I had to give that
career up. And as I said, I've built a career
out of being a media freedom activist. There's a lot
(11:36):
of people I think and expect me to be psychologically damaged.
I've certainly been affected by that experience. It certainly changed
me in very profound ways. I don't think I suffer
from PTSD. I think I learned a lot about myself,
a lot more than I think I would have wanted.
But you know these things, but you know what they say,
what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and it didn't
(11:57):
kill me, So yeah, I you know, it was an
experience I would never want to have gone through again,
but want my worst enemy to go through. But it
wasn't all bad.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I'd love to get your reactions to this, To get
both of your reactions to this. There is this scene
it near the end of the film when you're changing
out of your prison clothes and you put on a
black and white shirt and when you got changed, you
sort of stood there for a moment. You're looking at
yourself in the mirror, I think, and I remember looking
(12:30):
at you going, that's not the Peter I met at
the beginning of this film. And I don't know whether
Richard that was your intention in that scene to sort
of represent the impact that this whole experience had had
on you, or whether Peter that was how you felt.
But you know, in that moment, you could just see
what an impact. You know, I felt like you were
(12:51):
a different person than the person I've been at the
beginning of the film.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, I'll let Rocks respond to that.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Yeah, Look, we talked to I talked with the director
Creeve Standards briefly before we went into that scene, but
none of us had We didn't really know what we
were going to do, and so I guess I pulled
on the clothes and then whatever came out came out.
(13:21):
And I talked to Creeve afterwards about that moment, and
he said we both agreed that we probably didn't need that,
that it could be a much simpler thing. And so,
in the way of filmmaking, you do kind of five
different versions of it, and so the version of it
that he chose was the one which, you know, Peter
(13:42):
kind of goes to pieces, but again, you don't know
at the time if that's if that's going to work.
It just seemed to be, I guess to underpin the
fact that it was, there were so many things happening
in that moment. First and foremost was the fact that
(14:04):
that Peter was leaving behind his colleagues to whose prison
terms hadn't been commuted at that point, So there were
so many difficult things that he was going to have
to face. And yes, as you rightly point out, the
fact that something has changed and changed forever.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Richard de Rolls leave a mark on you, And if yes,
what has stayed with you from this film?
Speaker 4 (14:33):
I've become so much, so much more aware of the
place of journalism and the concerned about what's happening to
the world of journalism.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
The fact that.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
You know that everywhere you seem to turn these days,
unless journalists have seemed to be towing the line, unless
they seem to be conforming to the whatever the kind
of appreciate, you know, the particular political narrative is that
they are regarded as the enemy of the people. And
(15:14):
I think this is the world that we're increasingly living in.
And so I'm so much more my years, They are
so much more attuned to that now.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
And Peter, maybe I can give you the last word
on this. You know, why is it important to keep
reminding people, you know that journalists going about their daily
job can face such challenges and dangers day to day.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Because I mean, I guess it's democracy one o one.
Isn't it that you can't have a functioning democracy without
a free press that's capable of holding the powerful to account.
And I know sometimes that sounds a little bit cliched,
but it is. You know, like all cliches, there's a
big fat gob of truth in there. We need good
(16:00):
journalists to help inform public debate, to keep us to
keep a system working as it should. It's one of
the reasons why whenever you get a military coup or
you get an authoritarian in power, the first place as
they go is to the local news organizations to try
and shut them down or control them. That's, you know,
(16:22):
the erosion of press freedom that Rocks has been talking
about is something that is at critical stage right now.
More journalists have been imprisoned than ever before, and more
have been killed on the job than ever before. And
so if this movie does nothing other than provoke a
few conversations about that make people think a little bit
(16:43):
more deeply about the role of good journalism. Then I
think we'll have achieved something important.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Peter, thank you so much for your amazing story and
for sharing it. And Richard, thank you so much for
your stunning performance in this film That was journalist Peter
Grist and actor Richard Roxsborough. Their film The Correspondent, is
in cinemas this Thursday.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rodkin, listen
live to News Talks at B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks AB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In December twenty thirteen, Australian journalist Peter Grester was arrested
in Egypt, charged with aiding a terrorist organization. What followed
was four hundred days of incarcerations, solitary confinement, interrogations, a
politically motivated trial, and completely complete uncertainty in a corrupt
legal system. Peter's story and fight for freedom has been
(00:34):
turned into a film. It's starring Aussie actor Richard Rocksborough.
The film was called The Correspondent and joining me now
is Peter grest and the man who plays him on
the big screen, Richard Rocksborough. Lovely to have you both
with us.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Thanks Francesca.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Peter. Maybe you can start by setting the scene for us.
It's twenty and thirteen. You're in Cairo. You've been sent
there to cover holiday leave for a fellow Al Jazeera journalist,
and pretty quickly things start to go bad.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, that's right. We were covering the unfolding political crisis
between rival groups, supporters of the Old Muslim Brotherhood, the
government that had been ousted about six months earlier, and
the supporters of the interim administration that was trying to
set up fresh elections, And yeah, I was doing what
I'd considered to be pretty vanilla journalism, nothing overly controversial, because,
(01:25):
as you said, I was only filling in and I
didn't really know the politics of the country that well,
so it was just fairly routine stuff. And there was
a knock on the door December twenty eighth of twenty thirteen,
and opened the door and rushed a whole bunch of
very burly Egyptian security guards or security officers, playing clothed,
(01:49):
but it was pretty clear that they were moving with
the kind of professionalism that officials you'd expect officials to have,
and they marched me off, placed me under a rest,
and very quickly learned that I was facing some very
very serious terrorism charges.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Richard, what did you know of Peter's story? Can you
remember this?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Yeah, look, I followed it really closely. Australia kind of
stood to attention when this happened. I don't think Peter
himself realized how front and center the story was in
Australia at the time. It just seemed so bizarre to
everybody that you know, a known respected foreign correspondent whose
(02:27):
face we'd seen in reports across time, had suddenly been
dragged off the streets for doing his job essentially, and
was then charged and was then in prison for seven
years on terrorism charges. It seemed so, it seemed so
outrageous and bizarre, and it was certainly a big part
(02:49):
of the Australian conversation at the time.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, I imagine it was. You know, Peter, it is
such an incredible story. I mean, you were accused of
financing and aiding a terrorist organization. It was mind boggling
and also extremely serious. So how do you when those
early days and weeks and months get your hit around
finding yourself in a situation like this.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Initially I couldn't. I mean, you know, I'd never done
anything like this before. I hadn't been through it. I
didn't really quite understand what was going on. And there's
a guy that appears makes a cameo in the movie,
a guy called it la abdul Fata, who had been
an extraordinary, wonderful, intelligent humanitarian and pro democracy activist, and
(03:39):
regrettably he had been imprisoned by most of the regimes
in Egypt at the time because he was a wonderfully
charismatic figure who had the capacity to really mobilize people.
But he also schooled me in the dark arts I
suppose of surviving prison. He made it. He helped me
understand that prison first and foremost, even though we initially
(04:00):
focus on the physical confinement, on the bars and the
walls and the doors and so on, it's actually a
psychological problem. And once I understood that, once he gave
me the tools to cope, I found it so much
easier to manage.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Because was it him that told you that there is
no place for self pity in present?
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
And he's still in prison, by the way. I've just
come back from a hunger strike earlier this year to
support his mother, who's also striking to try and get
him released.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So, Richard, how do you get your hit around a
character like this? I suppose? Also my first question to
you is what was it about the story Peter's story
that drew you to really wanting to play him?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Well, I guess, as I was saying, it was such
a kind of it was such a shock to Australia
at the time that this had actually happened, So it
was an important story in that context. But given what's
happened to journalists and journalism since that time, it felt
(05:04):
like it was a you know, it was an even
more urgent story to tell the simple fact that the
journalists used to be protected by the Geneva Convention and
there now regarded as fair.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Game in.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Theaters of war. But also that you know in the
White House now that the Press Corps is chosen by
the government for the first time. There are all of
these things that are happening to journalism that are really
potent and quite scary encroachments on what used to be
a pretty straightforward thing that people accepted. So I guess
(05:47):
I felt that it was a really urgent and important
story to get involved.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
With, and quite a responsibility in a sense. I mean,
was it a daunting role to take on?
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Totally totally, because you know, I had such respect for
Peter in his work, and it's not something you take
on lightly playing something some playing a character who's a
real human being. Luckily, in this instance, Peter has been
such a supporter of the project from the get go,
(06:20):
so from the very first read through he was there
and I was able to obviously, apart from do the
sneaky actors work of kind of you know, checking out
his every move and the way that he was and
the secret sly things that actors take away and put
in their pocket. It was also just knowing that I
(06:41):
could talk to him freely and that he would help
me out if need be, and I could pester to
him with irritating little questions along the way.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Because Richard, I know that you know, when playing a
real life character, some actors like to meet the person
they're portraying. Others don't. They do their research in other ways.
So clearly it was very helpful in this particular situation
to have Peter around. Is that the way you would normally.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Work well, it really depends on this situation. I mean,
I've played real life characters, some of them very much
in the public eye in the past.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
In this particular.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Case, though, in conversations with the directory, it became really
clear that we didn't want to do a kind of
impersonation of Peter, that that was not where the relevancy
of this story lay. That it was much more going
to be about trying to occupy the internal space of
what that person went through in that environment. So that
(07:43):
once the kind of impediment of having to look like
be like, act like Peter was taken away. It felt
like it was safer was it was safer terrain for
all of us because the film also is oddly it's
a POV film, so it's all new. Yeah, apologies to everybody,
(08:07):
but it's it's one hundred percent. I mean every single
frame which I which was also unexplored territory for me.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I think I was three quarters of the way through
and I thought, I don't think I've seen a scene
without Richard.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
And it yet.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
No, no, no, no, you don't need to apologize. You
don't need to apologize. But I did think to myself, gosh,
this was an exhausting shoot.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah, it's one of the things that I actually took.
It was hugely gratified by that approach too, I have
to say, because it meant that I was also absolved
in having to worry about whether he'd got my walk
right or some verbal tick of mine right that you know,
he was he was embodying the experience rather than me
as an individual, and that was that was made it
(08:50):
a lot easier, I think, to watch and also to
work with him.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Did you notice, though Richard watching you sort of slyly
out of the corner of his eye when your first
do you think he is keeping a close eye on me?
Tell me, Peter, what did you What was it like
to sit and watch your story on the big.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Screen, strangely discombobulating. Like I've spoken about this a lot,
I've actually built a career on being on what I
went through in Egypt. I've written about it. I've given
countless speeches and interviews about it. So a lot of
that is kind of downstream processing. It's actually sort of
(09:28):
ongoing therapy, if you like, by applying meaning and significance
to what to the experience we went through. And so
I thought I knew it inside and out, but watching
Rock's on screen, watching the film on screen for the
first time was really through me because I didn't anticipate
that they would nail the experience. The kind of disorientation
(09:52):
of the arrest, the confusion and claustrophobia of confinement, that
loss of agency, the loss of control, all of those
things were really really deeply in bad in the core
of this film, and so to see that and be
drawn right back there was really really made me feel
(10:13):
a little bit punch drunk. After I walked out of
the cinema for the first time.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
What really struck me was just how incredibly powerless you were.
You know, like the Australian embassy would come and see
you and they would say to you, oh, look, there's
an official process to go through. Al Jazia would send
you a lawyer, but they would then be arrested for treason.
It felt like no one else could see how utterly
ridiculous you know, what was happening to you was.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, it certainly felt that way. I mean, I think
a lot of people could see how ridiculous it was,
which is one of the reasons it'd got such enormous
global outrage. But you know, when you're in the middle
of that maelstrom, you really have to submit to the
fact that you really are out of control, and that
you've got to accept the reality of the thing that
(10:57):
you're confronting, rather than the fantasy of what you'd like
it to be. It's a difficult thing to be involved with.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
How has it impacted you, Peter, and how you went
on to continue to do your work?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Well, it buggered my career. I'm still a convicted terrorist,
I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve and
that those are things that are pretty difficult to have
when you're to carry when you're trying to work as
a correspondent. In the end, I had to give that
career up. And as I said, I've built a career
out of being a media freedom activist. There's a lot
(11:36):
of people I think and expect me to be psychologically damaged.
I've certainly been affected by that experience. It certainly changed
me in very profound ways. I don't think I suffer
from PTSD. I think I learned a lot about myself,
a lot more than I think I would have wanted.
But you know these things, but you know what they say,
what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and it didn't
(11:57):
kill me, So yeah, I you know, it was an
experience I would never want to have gone through again,
but want my worst enemy to go through. But it
wasn't all bad.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I'd love to get your reactions to this, To get
both of your reactions to this. There is this scene
it near the end of the film when you're changing
out of your prison clothes and you put on a
black and white shirt and when you got changed, you
sort of stood there for a moment. You're looking at
yourself in the mirror, I think, and I remember looking
(12:30):
at you going, that's not the Peter I met at
the beginning of this film. And I don't know whether
Richard that was your intention in that scene to sort
of represent the impact that this whole experience had had
on you, or whether Peter that was how you felt.
But you know, in that moment, you could just see
what an impact. You know, I felt like you were
(12:51):
a different person than the person I've been at the
beginning of the film.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Yeah, I'll let Rocks respond to that.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Yeah, Look, we talked to I talked with the director
Creeve Standards briefly before we went into that scene, but
none of us had We didn't really know what we
were going to do, and so I guess I pulled
on the clothes and then whatever came out came out.
(13:21):
And I talked to Creeve afterwards about that moment, and
he said we both agreed that we probably didn't need that,
that it could be a much simpler thing. And so,
in the way of filmmaking, you do kind of five
different versions of it, and so the version of it
that he chose was the one which, you know, Peter
(13:42):
kind of goes to pieces, but again, you don't know
at the time if that's if that's going to work.
It just seemed to be, I guess to underpin the
fact that it was, there were so many things happening
in that moment. First and foremost was the fact that
(14:04):
that Peter was leaving behind his colleagues to whose prison
terms hadn't been commuted at that point, So there were
so many difficult things that he was going to have
to face. And yes, as you rightly point out, the
fact that something has changed and changed forever.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Richard de Rolls leave a mark on you, And if yes,
what has stayed with you from this film?
Speaker 4 (14:33):
I've become so much, so much more aware of the
place of journalism and the concerned about what's happening to
the world of journalism.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
The fact that.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
You know that everywhere you seem to turn these days,
unless journalists have seemed to be towing the line, unless
they seem to be conforming to the whatever the kind
of appreciate, you know, the particular political narrative is that
they are regarded as the enemy of the people. And
(15:14):
I think this is the world that we're increasingly living in.
And so I'm so much more my years, They are
so much more attuned to that now.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
And Peter, maybe I can give you the last word
on this. You know, why is it important to keep
reminding people, you know that journalists going about their daily
job can face such challenges and dangers day to day.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Because I mean, I guess it's democracy one o one.
Isn't it that you can't have a functioning democracy without
a free press that's capable of holding the powerful to account.
And I know sometimes that sounds a little bit cliched,
but it is. You know, like all cliches, there's a
big fat gob of truth in there. We need good
(16:00):
journalists to help inform public debate, to keep us to
keep a system working as it should. It's one of
the reasons why whenever you get a military coup or
you get an authoritarian in power, the first place as
they go is to the local news organizations to try
and shut them down or control them. That's, you know,
(16:22):
the erosion of press freedom that Rocks has been talking
about is something that is at critical stage right now.
More journalists have been imprisoned than ever before, and more
have been killed on the job than ever before. And
so if this movie does nothing other than provoke a
few conversations about that make people think a little bit
(16:43):
more deeply about the role of good journalism. Then I
think we'll have achieved something important.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Peter, thank you so much for your amazing story and
for sharing it. And Richard, thank you so much for
your stunning performance in this film That was journalist Peter
Grist and actor Richard Roxsborough. Their film The Correspondent, is
in cinemas this Thursday.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rodkin, listen
live to News Talks at B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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