EXCLUSIVE: Former FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt is to executive produce a major new film based on her memoir Even Silence Has An End.

Ambitious Brussels-based Entre Chien & Loup has picked up the rights to Betancourt’s memoirs and are currently packaging the project.

“The level of budget is not going to be below €20 million,” said Sebastien Delloye of what is likely to be the biggest budget film in the company’s history.

In 2002, while campaigning as a candidate in the Colombian presidential elections, Betancourt was abducted by the FARC (the Colombian Revolutionary Army). She spent six and a half years as a hostage in the jungle, several of them in chains. After several escape attempts of her own, she was saved by the Colombian forces in a reckless rescue operation called “operation jaque”. Her story became an international media sensation.

The Betancourt movie is one of several new projects on Entre Chien & Loup’s production slate as the company embraces “more ambitious and market-oriented projects” in the words of producer and founder Diana Elbaum.

The company has just picked up the rights The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson, a New York Times bestseller. This will be scripted by Michel Fessler (The Emperor’s March) and co-developed with Filmlance (Sweden).

Entre Chien & Loup co-produced Ari Folman’s Quinzaine entry The Congress. Its other recent coproductions include Minuscule The Movie by Thomas Szabo and Hélène Giraud, La Marche by Nabil Ben Yadir (Les Barons) to be released this autumn, Filth by Jon S. Baird starring James McAvoy and the new film by the brothers Larrieu (Peindre ou faire l’amour) titled Amour, Crime Parfait with Mathieu Amalric and Karin Viard. 

The company is also currently finishing Sam Garbarski’s Vijay and I starring Patricia Arquette, Moritz Bleibtreu, Danny Pudi and Michael Imperioli.  

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