Cannes

Filmmaker and designer Muzaffar Ali's long-awaited USD 25-million film on the 13th century Sufi saint and poet Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi is finally poised for take off, thanks to funding from the Qatar Foundation run by the wife of the Emir of the Gulf state.

For both Qatar and Ali, the upcoming English-language film titled 'Rumi The Fire of Love', will be the first foray into international movie production, it was announced here on the sidelines of the 61st Cannes Film Festival.

The Indian director, whose fame rests on the critically acclaimed Gaman and Umrao Jaan, hasn't made a film for over two decades.

More than a year ago, Ali, who heads the New Delhi-based Rumi Foundation and hosts an annual Sufi music festival since 2001, had announced that the cast of the film would be headed by Al Pacino and Daniel Day-Lewis.

But the film industry weekly, Variety, has reported that the casting director of the film is currently looking for an A-list Hollywood star to step into the lead role. Deepak Chopra and Sufi expert Kabir Helminski are on board as script consultants.

Rome-based Istar Productions is in charge of putting the project together and among the technicians whose participation has already been confirmed is veteran cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the Bernardo Bertolucci associate who has also shot films like Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now' and Warren Beattys 'Reds'.