‘Camp X-Ray’ trailer: Kristen Stewart forges friendship in a war zone

Kristen Stewart is on the verge of breaking rank in the first trailer for the military drama “Camp X-Ray,” unveiled by IFC on Friday.

Written and directed by Peter Sattler (making his feature debut), “X-Ray” finds Stewart playing Cole, an ambitious young Army guard at Guantanamo who, against orders and her better instincts, forges a connection with Detainee 471 (Payman Maadi, star of the Oscar-winning Iranian film “A Separation”).

Instructed by her superiors that “This is a war zone” and told not to let the prisoners — make that “detainees” — get inside her head, Cole is torn between her sense of duty and her recognition of shared humanity.

As she tells a superior in the trailer, which you can watch above, “It’s not as black and white as they said it was going to be.” In another moment, her unlikely friend Ali (Maadi) reminds her, “You and me, we are at war.”

Scheduled for release Oct. 17 from IFC, “Camp X-Ray” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and met with mixed to positive reviews, many of which commended Stewart and Maadi’s performances.

For Stewart, the reluctant “Twilight” star, “X-Ray” marks something of a return to her indie roots.

At Sundance, Stewart told the Times, “It had been two years since I worked, but it wasn’t my choice to take a break. … Nothing had given me that compulsion, nothing that made me feel it was meant for me to do.”

When “Camp X-Ray,” came along, she said, “it was very emotional and a genuine fresh perspective on something current. It had everything I look for in a project.”

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