A March 4 Tweet from film director Shekar Kapur says, “The most beautiful words to a writer? THE END. Just wrote those two words on the PAANI script.” That’s at http://twitter.com/shekharkapur.
‘Paani’ is the name of a film – to be released in 2011-12 – written and to be directed by Shekhar Kapur. The Ottawa Citizen reported last June that, “Kapur calls it his ‘passion project’ and credits (Council of Canadians chairperson Maude) Barlow’s book Blue Covenant for giving him a major piece of inspiration. …Kapur found Barlow after meeting documentary maker Irena Salina and seeing her film Flow.” Kapur says, “I have been wanting to make this movie for a long time. Irena said ‘you have to read Maude’s book.’ Blue Covenant was the spark that coalesced the idea.”
IMDb summarizes the plot as, “Thirty-five years into the future in a city of 20 million people, a war has begun in the quest for water known as the Water Wars between those that have water and those that do not.”
The film will be produced by Oscar winner Barrie Osborne (The Lord of the Rings), Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and author Deepak Chopra. Oscar winner AR Rahman is composing the music, while Jill Bilcock (Moulin Rouge) will be the film’s editor.
In May 2010, Barlow spoke alongside Kapur at a media conference on the film at the Cannes Film Festival in France, http://canadians.org/campaignblog/?p=3585.
