For someone who spent 118 days imprisoned in Iran after reporting on the disputed 2009 election there, Maziar Bahari has a surprising sense of humor about the subject.
If “Rosewater,” Jon Stewart’s cinematic retelling of his incarceration, enjoys any success at all, then “credit goes to the Iranian government, really,” Mr. Bahari said wryly in a recent interview.
On this October morning, Mr. Bahari, a 47-year-old journalist, was sitting next to Mr. Stewart in a conference room at the offices of “The Daily Show,” the satirical current-events program that Mr. Stewart hosts for Comedy Central.
Being here in Midtown Manhattan, Mr. Bahari said, was just as risky as being back in Iran, given “all the people who hold a grudge against Jon, from radical Zionists to radical Islamists.”
With a sheepish grin, Mr. Stewart replied, “I really do unite the world.”
That is the scathing, self-deprecating sensibility that audiences expect from Mr. Stewart, who has made his name speaking humorous truths about incompetent leaders, failing institutions and the feckless news media covering them.
But “Rosewater,” his feature directing and screenwriting debut, shines a spotlight on the unapologetically sincere side of this 51-year-old late-night comedian, who, off camera, was stubbly and noticeably dressed down. (“He always looks like he’s auditioning for ‘Oliver Twist,' ” Mr. Bahari said.)
“Rosewater,” which Open Road Films will release Nov. 14, is not necessarily Mr. Stewart’s attempt to cross over to a full-time moviemaking career. It is more like the fulfillment of his desire to tell one particular story — Mr. Bahari’s — that resonates with him, and that encapsulates the continuing battle between individuals and governmental structures trying to stop the flow of information.
“These apparatus are so much more damaging to these countries than any piece of information they would possibly want to suppress,” he said.
Mr. Bahari, who was born in Tehran and studied film and communications in Montreal, was among the hundreds of observers and demonstrators swept up by the Iranian government in June 2009. At that time, he had become a highly visible contributor to outlets like Newsweek and the BBC, covering the Iranian presidential election and the protests that followed when, amid claims of irregularities, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defeated reform candidates like Mir Hussein Moussavi.
Mr. Bahari also appeared on “The Daily Show” a few days before being taken into custody, in a taped segment with the correspondent Jason Jones (who facetiously complained about his “Western-educated Newsweek doublespeak”). But Mr. Bahari said “The Daily Show” was not responsible for his arrest. “I was already being monitored,” he said, and when the Iranian government saw his appearance, he said, “they put one and one together, and they realized it’s 11.”
Mr. Stewart added, “As much as we like to believe in American exceptionalism, there wasn’t a lot of moments of, like, ‘We caused this.' ”
Following months of pressure from international leaders and the media (including “The Daily Show,” which called attention to Mr. Bahari’s confinement), he was released in October 2009 from Evin Prison in Iran on $300,000 bail.
Mr. Bahari, whose father had been detained under the shah of Iran, and his sister by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, described his own captivity as “a mixture of Kafka and Monty Python.”
In particular, Mr. Bahari was fascinated by his personal interrogator and torturer, a Revolutionary Guardsman he nicknamed Rosewater (for the fragrant cologne he wore) and who said he believed Mr. Bahari attended orgies and received sexual massages on his journalistic assignments.
“You have a torturer who’s supposed to be this serious, ideological person,” Mr. Bahari said, “when at the same time, he’s like a 14-year-old schoolboy with pimples, and as horny as that.”
Mr. Bahari, who now lives in London, became a recurring guest on “The Daily Show,” and Mr. Stewart became fascinated with the narrative he recounted in a best-selling memoir, originally titled “Then They Came for Me.”
“It’s not a polemic, it’s not a diatribe,” Mr. Stewart said. “It’s just a beautifully woven story of the generations of damage that are done by oppressive regimes.”
Mr. Stewart encouraged Mr. Bahari to pursue a film adaptation of the book, one that he planned perhaps to produce until he decided more hands-on involvement was required.
“It was more impatience than anything else,” Mr. Stewart said, explaining why he became the film’s writer and director. At “The Daily Show,” he said, “I’m accustomed to having a stupid idea at 9 o’clock, it’s on the air by 6, and you can forget about it. The more glacial pace of film development seemed frustrating.”
Mr. Stewart received informal feedback on his screenplay from industry colleagues like J. J. Abrams and Ron Howard; he also got support from producers like Scott Rudin, who has shepherded films by comedy stars like Chris Rock, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone; and from Gigi Pritzker, the billionaire philanthropist and a founder of OddLot Entertainment.
In the summer of 2013, Mr. Stewart took his first substantial hiatus from “The Daily Show,” leaving the show in the care of the guest host John Oliver. He set off for Amman, Jordan (which stood in for Tehran), with what he called “a pretty skeletal crew” — a production designer, a director of photography, a first assistant director “and that’s pretty much it” — to make his movie.
But even though he has been overseeing the mock-news operations of “The Daily Show” for some 15 years, Mr. Stewart said “film is a different animal.”
With his “Rosewater” team, Mr. Stewart said, “I needed them to lend their experience, too. When I would sit with them and go, ‘So, I need a huge mural of Khomeini on an overpass,’ they would be like, ‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’ Beyond the rioting that would occur in Sunni Jordan.”
(Ultimately, Mr. Stewart said, this particular need was solved by “10 guys hold up a 10-by-20 green screen.”)
Gael García Bernal, who plays the on-screen version of Maziar Bahari (opposite the actor Kim Bodnia, who plays Rosewater), said Mr. Stewart’s lack of experience made him a more collaborative director and the making of the movie more exhilarating.
Recalling his preparations for the film, Mr. García Bernal said: “Everything they told you was incredible. ‘It’s going to be in Jordan.’ Perfect. ‘It’s going to be in blistering heat.’ Perfect. ‘It’s going to be during Ramadan.’ Yes! It all sounds like a good plan, really.”
That he is a Mexican-born actor playing an Iranian-born character, Mr. García Bernal said, was not significant. “I’m an actor, therefore I can do whatever,” he said with a laugh. “I can play a Martian without having ever been there.”
Mr. Stewart was humble enough that “he knows what he doesn’t know,” he said. “He would ask us for help.” But Mr. García Bernal said he never doubted that Mr. Stewart was capable of making a serious film. “His comedy is very serious,” he said. “It taps into dangerous and uncomfortable issues for the sake of a better discussion.”
“Rosewater” has yielded some early positive reviews on the film-festival circuit, where Variety praised its “impressive tact and intelligence” and called it a “confident, superbly acted debut feature.” Writing about “Rosewater” in The New York Times, A. O. Scott said, “Mr. Stewart, the world’s leading fake newscaster, turns out to be a real filmmaker.”
The movie has also come as something of a surprise even to some of Mr. Stewart’s longtime friends and collaborators, who did not realize he possessed that aspiration.
Steve Carell, the former “Daily Show” correspondent, said he was “impressed and proud” of Mr. Stewart after seeing “Rosewater” this summer at the Telluride Film Festival (where he was supporting his own unexpectedly dramatic performance in “Foxcatcher”).
“It’s weird to say that you’re proud of a friend,” Mr. Carell said of Mr. Stewart. “I knew all of the things that everyone knows about him, how smart and funny and important he is, culturally. But I didn’t know that he was a filmmaker.”
Mr. Stewart, however, could see “Rosewater” on a continuum with his work on “The Daily Show.” The impulse to praise journalists who pursue their craft honorably and under dangerous conditions, he said, was not all that different from the reflex to lampoon them when they fail to meet their own standards.
“The only reason you mock something is when it doesn’t live up to the ideal,” he said. “There’s a huge difference between what these journalists are doing on the ground, and the perversion of it that is the 24-hour news networks.”
Bringing “Rosewater” to the screen, Mr. Stewart said, was not about acquainting viewers with who he is as a director, but getting himself comfortable with a storytelling medium in which the story does not emanate solely from him. “I’ve never been part of an audience for something I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve always been the performer. They’re always looking at me. It’s been the greatest thing, to be able to see something you’ve done, while snacking. I can have Raisinets and watch.”
Mr. Stewart, who lost Mr. Oliver to HBO after his “Daily Show” hiatus, was less sanguine about whether Comedy Central would give him time off in the future to make another movie. “I had a hard enough time, getting them to let me have this one,” he said.
The process of creating and promoting “Rosewater” has deepened the friendship between Mr. Stewart and Mr. Bahari, who check in on each other’s families, tease each other and share startlingly similar cultural references. This movie “is hardly ‘Not Without My Daughter, Part II,' ” Mr. Bahari said, nodding to that 1991 Sally Field melodrama. Mr. Stewart joked, “Well, that is actually my next project.”
Even when Mr. Bahari, who once considered himself an intensely private person, acknowledged that “Rosewater” had taught him the value of opening up about his imprisonment and sharing his story, he could not help doing so in a familiar acerbic tone.
“I’ve watched Oprah, so I know how much it helps to talk about this,” he said. “Jon was my own personal Dr. Phil.”
As if beaming with pride for his quip-firing disciple, Mr. Stewart, the sarcastic master, said: “I’m his life coach now. There have been a lot of trust exercises. I can’t tell you how many times he’s fallen backwards off a table, into my arms.”