Schnabel Casts Abbas in “Miral”
Director Julian Schnabel has tapped Palestinian actress Hiam Abbas (pictured) to star in “Miral,” a film about the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. Schnabel has written the screenplay and will direct. He’s spent the past few months trying to put his project together. Abbas was wonderful in the recent feature “The Visitor,” which is now on DVD and is strongly recommended by LemonWade.
Schnabel’s project is an adaptation of Italo-Palestinian Rula Jebreal’s book about the real-life Palestinian woman Hind Husseini, who started the Dar Al-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem in the wake of the 1948 partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Pic will span the years 1948-94.
Schnabel intends to lense the pic entirely on location in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
