2 weeks ago
EXCLUSIVE: BAFTA-winning Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) is group to nonstop Foreign Bodies, a humanities play biopic astir vaccine pioneer and bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine.
Haffkine, small known to nan wide public, was nan Ukrainian-Jewish intelligence whose activity connected cholera and plague vaccines successful nan precocious nineteenth and early twentieth hundreds of years helped prevention millions of lives. The British Raj appointed Haffkine arsenic their State Bacteriologist successful India, but falsely accused him of sidesplitting nineteen group from tetanus successful what became known arsenic “the Second Dreyfus Affair.”
Set crossed Odesa, Paris, London, Mumbai and Kolkata, nan movie “will travel Haffkine, a superb outsider, arsenic he is shaped by persecution, exile and individual loss, but who many times risks his ain assemblage and estimation successful pursuit of technological truth.”
The task is being produced by Helen Hadfield of Snapper Films, Alexandra Stone of Streetcar Productions, Egor Olesov of United Heroes, and J.D. Zacharias of Curiosity Rights.
Casting discussions are underway pinch producers presently connected nan crushed astatine nan Cannes marketplace to talk nan movie pinch imaginable partners.
The screenplay comes from British screenwriter Paul Twivy, who has spent nan past 3 years unearthing Haffkine’s communicative and had entree to family records.
Kapur, head of seven-time Oscar nominee Elizabeth, its sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and Cannes introduction Bandit Queen, told Deadline: “Foreign Bodies is simply a large-scale characteristic play astir a man caught astatine nan intersection of epidemic, empire, prejudice and faith. This is simply a communicative of specified epic scale, yet of specified individual and soul conflict, of a man who saved millions of lives, becoming some worshiped arsenic a God and reviled arsenic nan devil. It has a emotion communicative that transcends taste conflict and is heart-warming and heart-breaking astatine nan aforesaid time. In different clip and different context, but successful its epic nature, this movie reminds of Lawrence of Arabia.”
Twivy commented: “Shekhar’s bonzer accomplishment and penetration erstwhile directing biopics specified arsenic Elizabeth, makes him a cleanable fresh for a communicative that blends in-depth characteristic study pinch technological discovery, romanticist obsession and sweeping humanities upheaval.”
