Swarovski moves into film with Shekhar Kapur's Paani

Swarovski Entertainment, the newly-launched film arm of the luxury crystal brand, and India’s Walkwater Media have boarded Shekhar Kapur’s passion project Paani (Water) which he hopes to start shooting in November this year.
 
David Farr, who wrote Joe Wright’s upcoming Hanna, is working on the script of the project from a first draft written by Kapur. Osar-winning composer AR Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) has also boarded the project, along with production designer John Myhre (Memoirs Of A Geisha) and editor Jill Bilcock (Moulin Rouge).
 
Swarovski and Walkwater will be minority financiers on the $30m project, although Kapur said he is confident of finalising the rest of the finance before November. It will be the first project from Swarovski’s film arm. Kapur previously directed an 18-minute short for Swarovski, Passage, which screened at Venice last year.
 
Walkwater Media is a film and TV production outfit established in 2007 by former Adlabs chief Manmohan Shetty.
 
Set in the year 2040 when water has become scarce, Paani is a love story set in a mega-city that has been divided into two conflicting halves – an upper city that controls the water supply, and a lower city ruled by ruthless gangs.
 
“When I first started talking about this project ten years ago, nobody was interested, but now everyone is telling me to make it right away,” said Kapur, who is hoping it will raise awareness for a very real problem – the increasing scarcity of water and the way this resource is manipulated by corporations.
 
Kapur said he aims to shoot the film in Singapore and Dubai, and build sets for the mega-city outside Mumbai.
 
“Paani is a very special project that beautifully captures the purity of love and the power of water,” said Swarovski Entertainment’s Alexander Koll. “Being able to amaze and inspire is at the very heart of the Swarovski philosophy and our brand, so it was a natural choice for us to choose film in order to bring this forward.”