ROSIE MALEK-YONAN IN RENDITION
By Trip Miller
Assyria Times, CA
icle.php?storyid=3297
Oct 23 2007
LOS ANGELES, 22 October 2007 – Rosie Malek-Yonan’s latest role
in New Line Cinema’s Rendition is opposite Reese Witherspoon as
an Egyptian mother, Nuru El-Ibrahimi, whose son, played by Omar
Matwaly, is kidnapped by the CIA in Oscar winning director, Gavin
Hood’s politically charged thriller that sweeps through the world of
terrorism and torture.
Malek-Yonan is an Assyrian activist and author, intimately familiar
with her nation’s struggle as minority Christians in the Middle-East.
With the publication of her book, The Crimson Field in 2005,
Malek-Yonan brought the Assyrian Genocide to the limelight. While
Armenians are awaiting the next step by the U.S. House of
Representatives to recognize the Genocide, Malek-Yonan strives to set
the record straight that the Assyrians and Greeks were also a part of
the Genocide by the Ottoman Turks during WWI, wherein the Assyrians
lost two-thirds of their population.
Due to her expertise on the ongoing Assyrian Genocide, as evident
from her book, The Crimson Field, on the suggestion of famed Oscar
winning director, Terrence Malick, in 2006 Malek-Yonan testified on
Capitol Hill about the plight of the Assyrian Christians in Iraq.
Rendition premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in
early September 2007 and is now in theatres worldwide. The film also
stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, and Alan Arkin.
Film Critic, Roger Ebert, gave the film four out of four stars, saying
that, "Rendition is valuable and rare. It is a movie about the theory
and practice of two things: torture and personal responsibility. And
it is wise about what is right, and what is wrong."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
