EXCLUSIVE: BAFTA-winning Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) is set to direct Foreign Bodies, a historical drama biopic about vaccine pioneer and bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine.
Haffkine, little known to the general public, was the Ukrainian-Jewish scientist whose work on cholera and plague vaccines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries helped save millions of lives. The British Raj appointed Haffkine as their State Bacteriologist in India, but falsely accused him of killing nineteen people from tetanus in what became known as “the Second Dreyfus Affair.”
Set across Odesa, Paris, London, Mumbai and Kolkata, the film “will follow Haffkine, a brilliant outsider, as he is shaped by persecution, exile and personal loss, but who repeatedly risks his own body and reputation in pursuit of scientific truth.”
The project is being produced by Helen Hadfield of Snapper Films, Alexandra Stone of Streetcar Productions, Egor Olesov of United Heroes, and J.D. Zacharias of Curiosity Rights.
Casting discussions are underway with producers currently on the ground at the Cannes market to discuss the film with potential partners.
The screenplay comes from British screenwriter Paul Twivy, who has spent the past three years unearthing Haffkine’s story and had access to family records.
Kapur, director of seven-time Oscar nominee Elizabeth, its sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and Cannes entry Bandit Queen, told Deadline: “Foreign Bodies is a large-scale character drama about a man caught at the intersection of epidemic, empire, prejudice and faith. This is a story of such epic scale, yet of such personal and internal conflict, of a man who saved millions of lives, becoming both worshiped as a God and reviled as the devil. It has a love story that transcends cultural conflict and is heart-warming and heart-breaking at the same time. In another time and another context, but in its epic nature, this film reminds of Lawrence of Arabia.”
Twivy commented: “Shekhar’s extraordinary skill and insight when directing biopics such as Elizabeth, makes him a perfect fit for a story that blends in-depth character study with scientific discovery, romantic obsession and sweeping historical upheaval.”
