09/11/2011

The American Film Market (AFM), which closes today, has drawn the attention of the worldwide industry and potential investors to one of the new projects by German director Oliver Hirschbiegel (pictured), Caught in Flight. It is about the last two years in the life of Princess Diana, in particular her affair with Pakistani surgeon Hasnat Khan and her acute disappointment in love.

The biopic project, which shows Lady Di in a rather pathetic light, is scripted by London-born playwright Stephen Jeffreys, who also penned the screenplay to the 2004 film The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp (adapted from one of Jeffreys’s own stage plays). Production will be handled by Ecosse Films (Nowhere Boy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]), but other partners are being sought.

Hirschbiegel was catapulted onto the international scene with his multiple award-winning film Downfall [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bernd Eichinger
interview: Joachim Fest
interview: Oliver Hirschbiegel
film profile], about the Führer’s final days in his bunker, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. The director has since turned his hand to making English-language works. After The Invasion (starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig) in 2007, he made the Irish drama Five Minutes of Heaven, starring Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt, as well as several episodes of the series Borgia. He is currently working on a German/Italian project, The Angel Face, starring Moritz Bleibtreu as German-Calabrian mafia killer Giorgio Basile who later repented.

US actress Jessica Chastain (the radiant mother in Terrence Malick’s 2011 Palme d'Or-winner The Tree of Life) is rumoured to be lined up for the lead role in Caught in Flight. Shooting on the film is expected to start next spring and will take place between England, Angola, Pakistan, Paris and the South of France.

(Translated from French)