Rome-based production outfit Faroutfilms is partnering with Iraqi politician and producer Hero Talabani, the wife of Iraq's President Jala Talabani, on Italian/Iraqi co-production, Kirkuk. The film is a love story set in Iraq during the late 1980s during the 1986-87 Anfal campaign - when chemical attacks were ordered by Saddam to cleanse northern Iraq of Kurds

Talabani's company Suli Films has already raised 50% of the budget for the film. Faroutfilms is looking for European financing to complete the budget. Iranian-born writer-director Fairborz Kamkari will helm the project.

Hero Talabani is a powerful media figure in Iraq. She founded two TV stations, one satellite and one local, in Kurdistan. She worked a filmmaker herself in the late 1980s.

Here at the Berlionale Co-Production market, Faroutfilms is presenting another Iraq-based project, Jash -The Traitor,, also to be directed by Fariborz Kamkari. Due to shoot later this year, the film is a family drama set in northern Iraq.

A third Kamkari project, Arrivals/Departures, is also on Farout's slate. This is about the misadventures of nine Muslim women in Europe.

Closer to home, Faroutfilms is developing The Bridge, a Sicily-based drama written and directed by Ria Lussi.

Faroutfilms was founded in 1996 by producers Fabrizia Falzetti and Simona Belletti.

Topics