Freida Pinto is certainly on a role following her role in the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire as she was already cast in Woody Allen’s next feature with Josh Brolin and Anthony Hopkins, and has now found her way into Julian Schnabel’s Miral, the follow-up to the director’s fantastic feature The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Pinto joins the already cast Hiam Abbas who received some well-deserved notoriety for her performance in Thomas McCarthy’s The Visitor last year.
Miral is an adaptation of Italo-Palestinian Rula Jebreal’s book about the real-life Palestinian woman Hind Husseini (Abbas), who started the Dar Al-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem in the wake of the 1948 partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Pic will span the years 1948-94.
Schnabel wrote the screenplay and is working on an English language translation of Jebreal’s book to coincide with the film’s release. Filming will begin April 19 in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Hope is to have the film completed by Spring 2010.
Schnabel was nominated for Best Director for his work on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in 2008.
