Following the success of her father’s play, The Last Salute about Muntadhar Al-Zaidi, Pooja Bhatt is set to make a film version and will be co-producing it with actor, Dino Morea.
Al-Zaidi made headlines the world over after throwing a shoe at the then US president, George W. Bush at a press conference in 2008.
Imran Zahid, who portrayed the role of Al-Zaidi in the play will play the same role in the film. Bhatt revealed that the film will be shot entirely in Lebanon and will be in Arabic and English, with English subtitles.
“The material at hand and the revolutionary act of flinging the shoe at George Bush compelled me to beg my father to seriously explore the possibilities of us producing a global film. This was a global event, one that has gone down in history. In the recent past, films like Hurt Locker and Green Zone have given us a fair perspective of the situation in Iraq, but there have not been too many films from the Iraqi point of view,” Pooja said.
Collaborating with Muntazer Zaidi for the screenplay, Mahesh Bhatt said, “I will be presenting the film and it will be directed by a maverick non-conformist director from the Middle East.”
Pooja’s primary reason for making the film is “the need to at times taste life through cinema.” She goes on to say that at times, fiction “is simply not enough”.
