Allocine (via The Playlist) has brought online our first look at Julian Schnabel’s Miral, a film I am hoping makes its way to the Toronto International Film Festival in September as I will be in attendance and I’ve been waiting a while to see his narrative follow-up to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
The film stars Hiam Abbass, Freida Pinto, Willem Dafoe, Vanessa Redgrave, Alexander Siddig and Makram Khoury is an adaptation of Italo-Palestinian Rula Jebreal’s book about the real-life Palestinian woman Hind Husseini, 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.
The Weinstein Co. picked the film up last month and it’s set for a December 3rd limited release. It may find its way to the Venice Film Festival at the start of September, but I hold out hope if it does it will also make its way to Toronto as this was one I was hoping would end up at Cannes, but as Jeff Wells noted in April Schnabel told him “he chose not to unveil Miral, his latest, in Cannes, and that the period drama will instead debut in Venice and Toronto.” Fingers crossed for the latter.
Check out the trailer below.
