Darsheel's second film set against militancy in Assam

Mumbai, Sep 23 (IANS) Multilingual director Priyadarshan says his Hindi adaptation of acclaimed Iranian film 'Children Of Heaven', which has Darsheel Safary in the lead role, has been set in the backdrop of militancy in Assam.

'I'm not blindly adapting the Iranian film 'Children Of Heaven'. I'm moving completely away from the original material to set the story in Assam with the insurgency as the backdrop,' Priyadarshan told IANS.

There's an unofficial Hindi adaptation of 'Children Of Heaven' titled 'Salaam Bachche'. But Priyadarshan isn't aware of that.

'I saw the Iranian film and its Singaporean version 'Home Run'. I'm not following Majid Majidi's screenplay from the Iranian film at all. I'm only retaining the core of the original. I'm Indianising the screenplay completely, changing and adding more characters,' said the director whose first offbeat film 'Kanchivaram' got a standing ovation at the recently concluded Toronto Film Festival.

Giving Darsheel company in the film would be a new child-actress named Zia. She will play his sister. Priyadarshan chose Zia from the many hopefuls who auditioned for the role.

'This is my first Hindi film with kids in the lead. I am really looking forward to it. I start shooting from Oct 10.'

Atul Kulkarni and Rituparna Sengupta play the two kids' parents. Originally the director wanted Rahul Bose for the father's part, but the dates didn't work out.