Turkish-born French director Meta Akkus is prepping an autumn 2010 shoot for her debut feature The Fateful Pattern. Alex Brown of British production house Studio Eight Productions is producing the £1.2 m budgeted Oxford and Istanbul set drama, which will be shot for five weeks in Istanbul and a week in Oxford.

Ben Barnes (Dorian Gray [trailer], Easy Virtue [trailer]) is in negotiations for the male lead. Turkish actors Saadet Aksoy (winner of the Sarajevo Film Festival Best Actress Award in 2007 for her role in Semih Kaplanoglu’s Egg [trailer, making of]) and Timuçin Esen (who won Best Supporting Actor at 2005’s Antalya Golden Orange film festival for Yavuz Turgul’s Lovelorn) have already been cast.
Akkus co-wrote with Joe O’Bryne (Pete’s Meteor) the 1950s-set story of a young Englishman who travels to Istanbul and falls in love with a mysterious rug seller. Akkus is best known for her shorts La Solitude and La Peur.

Cinematographer Vincent Mathias (State Affairs) and Art Director Frank Walsh (Agora [trailer]) are also attached to the project.

Studio Eight has produced and co-produced over 30 feature films including David Bailey’s The Intruder (Charlotte Gainsbourg, John Hannah) and Terence Ryan’s The Brylcreem Boys (Gabriel Byrne, Bill Campbell).

Akkus said, “On Sunday, the first woman won the Academy Award for best director and this was a momentous occasion. This autumn, I’m making my first film as a young director. I work in hope to be the first French woman to lift the same award one day, by touching millions of hearts with my stories.”