Ben Kingsley and Stellan Skarsgård board The Physician

by Annika Pham

21/05/2012 - Sir Ben Kingsley, Stellan Skarsgård and Olivier Martínez have boarded the adventure film The Physician, the latest addition to Beta Film’s Cannes line up.

Directed by Philipp Stoelzl (Young Goethe in Love [trailer]) the epic adventure film set in 11th-century England and Persia will be shot in Morocco and Germany starting mid-June 2012. The film is based on Noah Gordon’s bestselling novel adapted to the screen by Jan Berger (We Are the Night [trailer], The Door). The young English actor Tom Payne (seen in HBO’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day) plays the lead role of Rob Cole, a penniless orphan who vows to become a physician. He travels to Isfahan in Persia to study medicine under the great Ibn Sina (Ben Kingsley). His unflagging quest for knowledge leads to the blossoming of friendship and true love.

Cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski (The Lives of Others [trailer, film focus]) is attached to the film and the visual effects will be handled by Academy-award winning Pixomondo (Hugo).

Stoelzl said: “The novel is not only a great adventure revealing the fascinating world of medieval medicine, but it also explores some of life’s big questions – about the meaning of death, whether religion is a liberating force or a prison of the mind, and the culture clash between East and West – all topics that concern us more than ever today.”

The project is produced by UFA Cinema in co-production with ARD Degeto and Beta Cinema. with support from Filmstiftung NRW, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Filmförderungsanstalt and Deutscher Filmförderfonds. Beta Film handles world sales.