Gerard Depardieu will be joining the cast of new Hungarian drama IT’S SHOWTIME, SIBERIA.
The film follows a group of POWs in a Siberian camp during WWI, who put on an old musical (stage show The Czardash Princess, which was first performed in 1915).
Depardieu is not the only big name connected to the project. Sarah Bolger (STORMBREAKER, The Tudors) stars as a singer and Jamie Campbell Bower as the conductor. Academy Award winning director Robert Dornhelm (documentary THE CHILDREN OF THEATRE STREET) will be behind the camera.
IT’S SHOWTIME SIBERIA sounds like a mixture of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL and Timberlake Wertenbaker’s stage drama Our Country’s Good, both of which explore the use of art and humour in the face of extreme adversity and dehumanisation. The former follows a father’s attempts to “rescue” his son from the reality of the concentration camp they’ve been sent to by persuading him it’s just an elaborate game, while the latter focusses on a group of convicts in New South Wales who stage a production of The Recruiting Officer.
The feature is being shot on location in Hungary, Germany and Austria, and is pencilled in for a 2016 release.
Source: THR
