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Ex-hostage Betancourt to work on captivity film
2009-07-02
BOGOTA (AFP) - French-Colombian former hostage Ingrid Betancourt announced Thursday she will work with a top Hollywood producer on a film about the six years she was held captive in the jungle by leftist guerillas. Speaking by telephone to Radio Caracol, Betancourt also said her book about the experience as a hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) would be published at the beginning of 2010. The former Colombian presidential candidate said she had given the film rights to American producer Kathleen Kennedy, who has worked with famous directors including Steven Spielberg. "The film project is going ahead," Betancourt said. Kennedy, a producer of "Schindler's List" -- a Spielberg-directed film that won the 1993 Oscar for best picture -- is "an extraordinary person," she told the station. "We have developed a great friendship, which is why I want to work with her rather than anyone else," she added. Betancourt, who was freed a year ago by the Colombian military, along with 14 other hostages, did not give further details about the film except to say it would take "plenty of time." The former hostage said the film would give viewers a chance to understand her ordeal from her point of view. In writing the book on her experience, Betancourt noted that she undertook a period of "introspection" that lasted through October. "I bring into the open all that I suffered. I revisit every instant and the readers will be in my shoes. "Each reader will be Ingrid, will experience the suffering, the hunger, the heat, the psychological pressures, the humiliations, the emotional wrenching," she said.
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