Production started this week on Suman Ghosh’s Nobel Thief (Nobel Chor), a drama that is being made to tie in with the 150th anniversary of the birthday of Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore.

The Bengali-language film is a fictional tale based around a true event – the theft of Tagore’s Nobel prize for literature from a museum in 2004.

Ghosh’s script follows a poor farmer who stumbles across the medal and tries to sell it in the hope of reviving the fortunes of both himself and his village. During this process he discovers that relevance of Tagore’s work and philosophy to the present day.

Tagore became the first non-Westerner to win the Nobel literature prize in 1913.

Nobel Thief is produced by Ashwani Kumar Sharma and the cast is headed by Mithun Chakraborty, Saumitra Chatterjee and Soma Chakraborty. Production runs until early April and completion is scheduled for August 2011.

Ghosh previously directed Footsteps (Podokkhep), which played at several international film festivals and won awards for best regional feature and best actor at the Indian National Awards in 2008. He followed Footsteps with Conflict (Dwando) in 2009.

Nobel Thief took part in the Primexchange programme at Film Bazaar in Goa in November 2010.