HELD FOR RANSOM IS LINKED TO GUANTÁNAMO
As one grows up, a career is not always obvious. Daniel Rye (played by Esben Smed), growing up in a small town in Denmark, is unsure of himself but knows that he enjoys photography. One day he applies for a position as assistant to an established photographer, flies to Somalia to take photos of the life of ordinary people in a country engulfed in civil war, and realizes that photography is indeed a career that he enjoys. After his stint in Somalia, he is excited about his next assignment—photographing ordinary people leading their lives in war-torn Syria. His plan in 2013 is to cross the border from Turkey in the morning, take photos, and return to Turkey in the evening. At the time James Foley, an American journalist, is being held somewhere in Syria by a rebel group, now known as ISIS, but that fact does not deter Rye from pursuing his dream career. After all, his guide Christina (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) secures a permit to take pictures from the Free Syria group. However, a new rebel faction linked to ISIS has suddenly taken control of that part of Syria, so he and his guide are detained. Christina is let go after some harsh interrogation; her left eye is scarred. But Daniel Rye is accused of being a member of the CIA, is tortured into confessing that he works for the CIA, and is detained under barbaric conditions. When he tries to escape into town, a Syrian family turns him over to the rebel group, which then transports him to the same holding facility as James Foley (Tobey Kabbell) in Aleppo. He then becomes friends with Foley and the other prisoners, who support one another.
Meanwhile, Rye’s family has lost touch with Daniel. While dealing with the psychological anxiety, they find a hostage negotiator, Arthur (played by the film’s co-director Anders W. Berthelsen), who also seeks to liberate Foley. Arthur goes inside Syria to determine whether Rye is alive and conditions for his release, namely, a large sum of Euros that his modest family cannot afford. Much of the film shows how Daniel gets along with his family and his girlfriend Signe (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen) and then how they react to his absence. The Danish government has a policy of not paying ransom, so the Rye family tries to raise money from Daniel’s friends and associates. But that is not enough until Rye’s mother Susanne (Christiane Gjellerup Koch) pleads with a billionaire, who contributes enough to match the ransom demand. Daniel is freed, and after Foley’s execution he speaks at a memorial service for Foley in New Hampshire. He then continues his life.
A warning: Fainthearted filmviewers will not be able to endure during the film. Scenes of torture and marks on Daniel Rye’s body attest to a level of barbarity that is far beyond anything imaginable. Yet the justification for inflicting unnecessary pain in scene after scene is made clear quite early in the film by a word mentioned by an ISIS commander—Quantánamo. That fact that the United States engaged in torture with impunity in pursuing the “war on terror” is well remembered by the Islamic warriors who knew how to exact revenge.
Directed by Niels Arden Oplev and Anders W. Berthelsen, and adapted from Puk Damsgård’s book The ISIS Hostage: One Man’s True Story of 13 Months in Captivity, the Political Film Society has nominated Held for Ransom as the best film exposé and best film on human rights of 2021. MH