On the movie: Paramount are funding, Michael Winterbottom directing and David Hare writing the script, which is making good progress. All that is certain. Casting is speculative but will be starry, and it wil be a mainstream feature film (a biopic, not a doc or drama doc). Filming late next year, in your cinema 2008.

Fair point, and thanks for the extra information.

For readers wondering about the footnote we both refer to, it says:

A year later, the British cancelled [the Mercy Corps microfinance] project, on the grounds that there was no conflict in the Ferghana Valley to resolve, so it was an inappropriate use of Conflict Resolution Funds. Cancelling this Andijan project further exacerbated economic distress and social tension, and contributed to the events that led up to the Andijan massacre in May 2005.

So…. I can’t help but ask, do you have any more information for us on the movie?

-James

Thank you for a very fair review, in which you not only summed up the book well, but made some excellent surmises as to my motivation in taking various approaches.

Only one point - I did not mean to imply any direct causality between the cancellation of the main phases of the micro-finance project, and the Andijan massacre. I merely make the point that economic hardship was what motivated many people to get out on the streets of Andijan, and the micro-finance project had (thanks to excellent Mercy Corps management) been doing much to alleviate hardship, and had the potential to have done much more.

Incidentally, since the book was written I believe it was this project in particular which the Uzbek authorities have cited in closing down Mercy Corps.