The Promised Land, 2011

Status: Pre-Production

(the period before filming begins, when special tasks are to be completed, such as finance, the selection of actors for the various roles in the film etc.

(movie can still be cancelled at all due to lack of finance, availabillity cast etc.)

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*** Filming scheduled for Summer 2010 ***

Summary:

A political crime thriller set in British-ruled Palestine at the end of World War II. The story details with the events that lead up to the 1948 partition of Palestine and the subsequent creation of the state of Israel.

After premiering two films at Sundance (The Killer Inside Me, The Shock Doctrine), Michael Winterbottom is right back to working on his latest project, "The Promised Land", and has just added some notable names to his cast.

Oscar-nominated actors Colin Firth and Matthew MacFadyen have now been recruited for this Palestine-set political crime thriller.

Firth has been cast as Avraham Stern, a poet and leader of the underground organization Lehi, which lead a violent campaign against the British Mandate in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. The British authorities also called the Lehi "The Stern Gang" (an extreme right-wing Jewish group).

The film also stars Jim Sturgess, who plays Tom Wilkin, one of two British officers (the other played by MacFadyen) who are trying to track down Jewish militant groups who are responsible for terror attacks against British soldiers and Arabs, which culminates in the 1946 attack on the British headquarters at King David Hotel in Jerusalem that left dozens of British soldiers dead.

The film is being produced by Andrew Eaton of Revolution Films, and is being represented by Fortissimo Films at the European Film Market that is running alongside the Berlin International Film Festival in Germany.

Michael Werner of Fortissimo described the project as, “one of the most gripping and powerful scripts I have read in a long time.”

The film is scheduled to be released in 2011.