The Hollywood Reporter
Writer-director Peter Sattler’s riveting first feature, Camp X-Ray, leaves aside the controversy surrounding Guantanamo Bay to focus instead on a personal drama of human connection and compassion, deftly drawn out of the mundane day-to-day of cellblock life. In essence a two-hander, it balances a powerfully internalized performance from Kristen Stewart, delivering perhaps her best screen work to date as an inexperienced military guard, against an equally compelling characterization from Payman Maadi as the long-term detainee who pierces her shell. Its psychological complexity and rich emotional rewards should ensure this expertly crafted if overlong film a significant audience.

HitFix Review: Kristen Stewart's solid performance anchors the probing, human 'Camp X-Ray' - B 
Camp X-Ray" is going to be a hard commercial sell, but the film has a delicate human heart, and it is ultimately rewarding. I think it's a strong indication of what Stewart can do with the right material, and it makes a case for Maadi as one of the most interesting character actors working right now. Solid, small, and sincere, "Camp X-Ray" offers an important perspective to a difficult conversation. 

Vanity Fair
You likely have strong opinion on Kristen Stewart's acting abilities. The Twilight movies turned you way on or way off. Well, throw that perception out the window.

BuzzFeed: Kristen Stewart Says Good-Bye To Twilight With Sundance’s “Camp X-Ray”
In Peter Sattler’s new film Camp X-Ray, which had its high-profile (thanks to its star) premiere at Sundance on Friday, Stewart plays, of all things, a guard at Guantanamo Bay. And she is very good in it. 

TheDailyBeast 
By the end of Camp X-Ray, you’re won over by Stewart’s layered turn as Cole, and Moaadi’s as the defiant Ali. It’s a role perfectly suited to her strengths—vulnerability and hidden courage—and few young actresses can hold a close-up like Stewart. 

Variety: Kristen Stewart and Payman Maadi channel Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in this competent but politically suspect drama.
The two leads are excellent and play off each other deftly. Acting almost exclusively with his bearded face as seen through the cell window, Maadi (“A Separation”) calibrates precisely the character’s mix of humor, anger, despair and endurance. In a turn that will surprise and impress those who know her only from the “Twilight” films, Stewart is riveting, especially in the final scenes, where Sattler reverses the camera’s perspective so that Cole is the one viewed through the window, appearing as a sort of prisoner herself.

source: EW

source: kstewartfans

Kristen Solo Portraits

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2014, 111 minutes, color, U.S.A., U.S. Dramatic

A young woman joins the military to be part of something bigger than herself and her small-town roots. Instead, she ends up as a new guard at Guantanamo Bay, where her mission is far from black and white. Surrounded by hostile jihadists and aggressive squadmates, she strikes up an unusual friendship with one of the detainees. As two people on opposite sides of a war, they struggle to find their way through the ethical quagmire of Guantanamo Bay. In the process, they form an unlikely bond that changes them both. Intricately constructed, Camp X-Ray is a case study in the power of performance. At still a young age Kristen Stewart has long been much more than a movie star, and with this nuanced and internal performance, she continues to prove she has serious acting chops. Opposite her, Payman Maadi delivers a riveting performance as a man caught in limbo, reaching out for reason. Burrowing past the politics and into the humanity of the infamous detention camp, writer/director Peter Sattler provides a fresh perspective on the discourse of the war on terrorism and achieves one of the great virtues of film—creating empathy. - T.G.

Screenings:

1/17/2014 12:15pm Eccles Theatre, Park City

1/18/2014 8:30am Library Center Theatre, Park City

1/18/2014 9:30pm Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City

1/20/2014 6:30pm Peery’s Egyptian Theater, Ogden

1/22/2014 2:30pm The MARC, Park City

1/24/2014 8:30pm Library Center Theatre, Park City 

'Camp X-Ray' is one of the nine film selected for Sundance USA initiative

1/30/2014 - San Francisco, CA — Sundance Kabuki Cinemas - sundancecinemas.com

Nine films from the festival's 2014 lineup have been selected, and will be screened to the public in nine venues (one film per venue, that is) across the country on January 30. That's just four days after the festival closes, so audiences will be getting them while they're hot. At each screening, the relevant filmmaker will be present for a post-film Q&A.

Festival director John Cooper says, “Year-round audiences and arthouse theaters are vital parts of the independent film community, and our Sundance Film Festival USA initiative allows us to extend the energy and excitement of the Festival to them.” 

Many of the selections are on the starrier end of the Sundance spectrum. San Francisco audiences will be getting the Kristen Stewart vehicle "Camp X-Ray," in which she plays a Guantanamo Bay guard who bonds with one of her prisoners. Chicago, meanwhile, gets Joe Swanberg's "Happy Christmas," in which Anna Kendrick (fresh from Swanberg's "Drinking Buddies") plays a young woman who moves in with her brother's family after a breakup. Melanie Lynskey and Lena Dunham co-star.[..]

first official Still - Kristen Stewart as Cole 

 

 the director Peter Sattler 

 

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