It's been revealed this morning that Dan Stevens from hit UK TV series Downton Abbey, Frieda Pinto and rapper K'naan will star in an adaptation of a Belgian Congo period romance novel titled The Catastrophist, written by Ronan Bennett.The book was a bestseller after it was published in 2007.
Bafta award winning director Nick Broomfield will direct it.
Here's Amazon's synopsis of the novel:
James Gillespie, a disillusioned Irish historian turned novelist, has arrived in the Congo on the eve of independence, hoping to reunite with his Italian lover, Ines. The two had once been passionately involved in Europe, but Ines's job as a journalist took her to the Congo, where her Communist leanings have kept her. Ines is an enthusiastic supporter of Patrice Lumumba, and her journalism reflects her bias. Gillespie, on the other hand, has a novelist's broader view, and his ability to see all facets of the issue simultaneously keeps him from choosing sides and drives a wedge between him and Ines. As she becomes more involved with Lumumba and his followers, he is befriended by an American CIA agent whom Ines suspects of being an enemy. When the political situation heats up, she puts herself increasingly in harm's way until, at last, Gillespie must put his own life on the line to save hers... The Catastrophist is a love story, a historical novel, a troubling reflection on Africa's ongoing political upheaval.
Call it Out Of Africa, the sequel...? Reductive, but you get my point... I hope.
It's not clear, but I'm assuming Stevens will play James Gillespie and Pinto will play Ines, his Italian lover. She's Indian by the way.
What role rapper K'naan will play isn't yet known. Although my guess is that he'll represent the locals - maybe a, shall we say, *tour guide* of some sort, for our white hero, or his damsel in distress.
Filming is due to start in Tanzania in February 2013.
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