Last summer, Jon Stewart took a sabbatical from his Daily Show hosting duties to direct his first feature film, Rosewater, starring Gael García Bernal. The drama is based on the experiences of Iranian-born Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari, who was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured for more than 100 days after Iran’s controversial 2009 presidential election. The imagery from the first trailer is especially haunting considering the journalists who are currently being held hostage in the Middle East.

In recent weeks, Stewart has confessed that he asked J.J. Abrams and Ron Howard for feedback on his screenplay. “They were both awfully gracious,” Stewart told Entertainment Weekly. “Basically, I would ask anybody who came on the show who is in the business, ‘While you’re sitting here, would you mind . . .’ I was that dick in a coffee shop with a script.”

Variety has already given the film a glowing review. An excerpt of the write-up, from the outlet’s chief film critic, Scott Foundas:

The punishing ordeal of Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari — imprisoned for 118 days on charges of espionage — is brought to the screen with impressive tact and intelligence by writer-director Jon Stewart in Rosewater, an alternately somber and darkly funny drama that may occupy the same geographic terrain as Argo (to which it will inevitably be compared), but in most other respects could hardly be more different. Largely a two-hander between Bahari (played by Gael Garcia Bernal) and the interrogator who puts him through a gauntlet of soul-crushing mindgames, Stewart’s confident, superbly acted debut feature works as both a stirring account of human endurance and a topical reminder of the risks faced by journalists in pursuit of the truth, minus the caper antics and flag waving of Ben Affleck’s populist Oscar winner.

The drama opens in U.S. theaters on November 7.