Camp X-Ray 2014 ***

Kristen Stewart has made good ground in her efforts to escape the Twilight shadow, even if few of her films have been as widely seen. Writer and director Peter Sattler gives Stewart plenty to do as a Guantanamo Bay guard who strikes up an unlikely friendship with prisoner Ali (A Separation’s Peyman Moaadi). The minimalist drama than unfolds is quite theatrical, which much of the dialogue spoken through the tiny slot of a door. Both Stewart and Moaadi excel in their roles, and Camp X-Ray manages to avoid the usual war-is-hell platitudes to uncover a human story caught in the mechanism of political manoeuvres.