In the boldest move to tell a true story since Paul Greengrass set United 93 in motion, director Oliver Hirschbeigel has announced plans to move forward with the telling of events inside the three day siege at a primary school in Beslan Russia, in 2004, by Chechen rebels.
Entitled simply The School, the screenplay, which will be grounded in an Esquire article, will be penned by Braulio Mantovani, who most famously wrote the pages for **City Of **God. It’s being produced by Brian Grazer, who will undoubtedly grant the wishes of both writer and director, to shoot the in Russian language, using local actors and non-professionals.
In a rather oddly worded statement (or it could be a translation, we’re not sure), Mantovani said of the sensitive subject “What makes this story great has little to do with bombs exploding and people dying. It what was people did inside the school during the three days of the siege, both hostages and attackers, that made me fall in love with the project.”
As tender as this subject is, the chosen combination of filmmakers makes sense. Hirschbeigel gaves us Downfall and The Experiment, and The School is set to be his next project after he’s done on The Invasion. Mantovani has most recently written Tropa de Elite, about a pair of childhood friends in Rio who eventually join the Military Police Special Operations Squad to fight drug lords.