With her riveting performance in her new film "Miral" getting good reviews, Freida Pinto's Hollywood career may get a push.
In the film, Freida plays an orphaned Palestinian teacher growing up in a war-torn Jerusalem camp.
The movie, which some Jewish groups claim is "anti-Israel", is being distributed by Weinstein Brothers.
The advertisement for the film boldly declares: "The movie they tried to stop is coming to New York. The protestors did not want the film to have a premiere at the United Nations last week."
"I saw the film as a cry for peace," Freida said at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. "It will have a special appeal to the younger generation. Peace is the way, Gandhi said, and Rula Jabreal (who looked into her own life for writing the novel) reiterates that idea."
The film is a French, Italian and Israeli production.
"Miral", which Freida signed soon after "Slumdog Millionaire" opened, was directed by Julian Schnabel (Oscar nominated for "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly") based on Jebreal's semi-autobiographical novel about the lives of three generations of women in Jerusalem.
The film, shown at festivals in Venice, London and Toronto, has done small business in Europe and is not expected, despite the controversy, to be a big success in America. It is, however, raising Freida's profile. This is her third film after the smash-hit "Slumdog Millionaire" (earning $360 million worldwide) and "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger".
Julian Schnabel told Variety: "If (Israel and Palestine) don't solve this problem, Israel won't exist anymore, and I don't want that to happen. The people who scream the loudest are not necessarily the sanest."
Freida has said that she did not look at it as a political film. For her, it was a story of survival and keeping one's dignity intact under the most depressing, humiliating and violent circumstances.
"Both Schnabel and writer Rula unanimously decided that I should do the film," Freida said. Rula guided her to know Palestinian families and arranged for her to spend a couple of days with a family.
Having the writer on the sets and at locations, Freida said, spurred her determination to give her best to the film. "I felt I had to do justice to this amazing woman," she said.
She told British newspaper The Independent that she knew of the Palestine-Israeli conflict from the newspapers but visiting the occupied areas gave her rare insights. "One of my friends is a lawyer and she knew a lot about the conflict, so I took note of what she said, but until you go there, nobody understands the human side," Freida said.
"That's when I decided I'm going to leave the politics of this alone and am going to work on the human story."
She has said that even though Slumdog's gritty scenes had prepared her for a tough new film, she still found the scenes of interrogation of Arab suspects by the Israeli military unnerving. She asked Jebreal if the script reflected the reality and if the beatings were really horrendous. She remembered the novelist saying it happened "but a lot worse."
Source:
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=178840
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