Beta Cinema is launching pre-sales at Cannes on a big-screen version of Julian Barnes’ novel The Noise Of Time that is being adapted by two- time Academy Award winner Christopher Hampton and will star August Diehl and Andrea Riseborough.
Polish filmmaker Jan Komasa, who was Oscar nominated for his 2019 feature Corpus Christi, is lined up to direct the fictionalised account of the life of composer Dimitri Shostakovich in Stalinist Russia.
Diehl will star as Shostakovich, while Riseborough will play his wife Nita, Shostakovich’s wife and intellectual equal.
The story follows the trajectory of the Russian composer’s life and career, beginning in 1936 when Shostakovich, aged 30, faces Stalin’s wrath after his opera is condemned. A stroke of luck prevents him from becoming a casualty of the Great Terror, and for decades he has to weigh appeasing those in power in Soviet Russia against the integrity of his music. Hampton won Oscars for his adaptations of The Father and Dangerous Liaisons.
The film will be produced by Thomas Kufus of Berlin-based zero one film, Leszek Bodzak and Aneta Hickinbotham of Poland’s Aurum Film and Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey at UK-based Wildgaze Films.
The Noise Of Time is set to shoot in early 2025.
Tassilo Hallbauer, Beta Cinema’s head of sales and acquisitions, said: “The story reflects on the collision of art and power, which couldn’t be more topical these days. However, the script’s tonality is outstanding, as the drama is giving way to black humor and subtle irony and leans heavily into neo noir thriller elements. August Diehl is a perfect match for this role as an ingenious, self-reflecting artist, who tears himself apart between integrity and bowing to the regime. And we can’t wait to see Andrea Riseborough in the multi-layered role of Nita.”
Diehl is soon to be seen as the notorious Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele in Kirill Serebrennikov’s Disappearance and in Michael Lockshin’s adaptation of Bulgakov’s The Master And Margarita. He is best known for his leading role in Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life.
Riseborough was Academy Award-nominated for her leading role in Michael Morris’ To Leslie, and her credits include Possessor, The Death of Stalin, Nancy, Nocturnal Animals and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman.
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