No Friend But the Mountains film adaption confirmed
Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained in 2013 on Manus Island after fleeing Iran as a refugee. He would not leave the offshore detention site for the next 6 years.
Just months after Behrouz Boochani took his first steps outside of his Manus Island prison in six years, his award-winning memoir, No Friend But the Mountains, has been confirmed for a film adaption. The feature film will be produced and developed by production companies Sweetshop & Green, Aurora Films and Hoodlum Entertainment. The project is intended to be filmed primarily in Australia and is expected to start production in mid-2021.
Nathan Mayfield of Hoodlum Entertainment said, ‘This is an incredible story about courage, the power of one man’s resistance and of the written word to give us hope. Hoodlum are proud to partner with Aurora Films and Sweetshop & Green and look forward to bringing each of our strengths in to bear in realising this extraordinary story for the screen.’ Gal Greenspan from Sweetshop & Green noted that they intend to ‘produce the film as an international co-production and share it with as many people around the world as possible.’
No Friend But the Mountain is a harrowing account of Behrouz’s experiences on the island, written on a contraband phone via WhatsApp in Farsi and translated by Omid Tofighian. It was a dangerous way for Behrouz to maintain his humanity in the face of the system detaining him. Behrouz’s book was published in 2018 and has since been released in 19 countries. The memoir has thus far won a litany of prizes including some of Australia’s biggest awards: the NSW Premier’s Award (2019), ABIA General Non-fiction Book of the Year (2019), National Biography Award (2019). It also won Australia’s richest literary award, the Victorian Prize for Literature which comes with a $100,000 prize.
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