Acclaimed writer Mohsin Hamid got “star struck” when he walked down the red carpet with Hollywood stars Kate Hudson and Kiefer Sutherland at the 69th Venice Film Festival on Wednesday night.
The Pakistani writer had not met the actors who appear in the big screen adaptation of his Booker Prize short-listed The Reluctant Fundamentalist before arriving in Italy for the world premiere. Hamid, who was on a family holiday in Vienna, while talking to Media said that he and his wife Zahra were only able to fly in for one day to attend the film festival after their parents agreed to babysit their children Dina, three, and three-month-old Vali.
“As an author, I’m used to being a reclusive hermit working on my own so coming to a big film launch with all these people and a celebrity gala, I feel like I’m gate-crashing a party. I certainly will be star struck tonight. I didn’t get to meet Kate Hudson or Kiefer Sutherland as almost all their scenes were filmed in New York.
I’ll be seeing the final version of the film for the first time, but I have seen a version that was quite close,” Hamid said. Mohsin Hamid said he was “thrilled” when director Mira Nair cast Riz Ahmed, a Londoner in the film as coming from a British-Pakistani background meant he was able to “capture the nuances” of the character.
“He’s a very intelligent man and he has enormous range. His performance is amazing,” Hamid said. Hamid has co-wrotten the screenplay and praised the director for a “faithful” adaptation with “integrity” and “vision”. However, he was disappointed that the filming had to be relocated from Pakistan to India because of security concerns, but said it was a necessary decision and hoped the soundtrack by contemporary Pakistani musicians would help recreate the mood of his home city, Lahore. Mohsin Hamid has just finished his new novel, a mock self-help guide, How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, which is due to be published next year. – Dailytimes
