Amalric, Rossellini line up for Satrapi's Chicken With Plums

Marjane Satrapi’s follow up to Persepolis, Chicken With Plums (sold in the market by Celluloid Dreams) is gearing up for a July start of shoot at the Babelsberg Studios in Berlin. Satrapi, who will co-direct with Vincent Paronnaud, has assembled a heavyweight cast. Bond villian turned Cannes competition director Matthieu Amalric is to be joined by Isabella Rossellini, Maria De Medeiros, Chiaro Mastrioianni and Golshifteh Farahani (among others).
 
Satrapi is promising that the live-action film, which will be shot entirely in the studios, will be in similar stylised vein to German Expressionist cinema of the 1920s. She tolls Screen: “There are many scenes that will be shot in the same way Murnau or Fritz Lang would shoot them.”
 
The film, described by the directors as a “sentimental thriller, is based on Satrapi’s graphic novel. The story chronicles the life of her great-uncle Nasser Ali Khan. The uncle, whose favorite meal had been his mother’s recipe for chicken with plums, was a celebrated musician who became prey to depression and allowed himself to die.

This will be the first film made through The Manipulators, the new alliance between Celluloid Dreams and Studio Babelsberg together with Munich-based Clou Partners.