Hotel Mumbai to open the Adelaide Film Festival in October
HOTEL MUMBAI, the thriller that brought together Hollywood star Dev Patel and Adelaide’s Tilda Cobham-Hervey, will open the Adelaide Film Festival at a gala national premiere on October 10.
- Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel frequents Adelaide’s Jasmin restaurant
- Tilda Cobham-Hervey: Dev Patel, me and F*cking Adelaide
HOTEL MUMBAI, the thriller that brought together Hollywood star Dev Patel and Adelaide’s Tilda Cobham-Hervey, will open the Adelaide Film Festival at a gala national premiere on October 10, although the couple’s attendance has not been confirmed.
The festival’s artistic director, Amanda Duthie, one of a handful to have seen Hotel Mumbai, said it was “an incredible, really amazing film” that she could not praise highly enough.
“It has all the best qualities of a suspenseful thriller but it is utterly imbued with humanity and respect,” she said.
Based on the bloody 2008 terrorist siege at a Mumbai hotel, the star-studded cast included Patel as a hotel waiter, Armie Hammer and Nazanin Boniadi as a wealthy American couple and Cobham-Hervey as their nanny.
Duthie said first-time feature director Anthony Maras – a Flinders University law graduate and the son of property developer Theo Maras – fulfilled the potential he showed in an earlier Adelaide Film Festival investment fund short film, The Palace.
Maras, who also co-wrote the film with John Collee, yesterday thanked the festival and the South Australian Film Corporation for their “unwavering support”.
“It could not be more fitting to premiere at the AFF, and so soon after the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival,” he said.
The film, shot in South Australia in 2016 before moving to India, almost fell foul of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
But the film’s producers extricated it from the Weinstein assets in April in a deal that freed it for sale to another distributor.
AFF director Amanda Duthie said the film was an extraordinary directorial debut for Maras who was earlier this year singled out by influential US industry publication Variety as one of ten international directors to watch.
“It will be a momentous occasion to open this year’s festival with (this) stunning Film Festival Fund feature,” Duthie said.
While it had been listed as a potential opener for last year’s AFF, the film has been subjected to delays, one after Maras suffered a minor accident at a Mumbai bar when the tip of his thumb was cut off by an electric fan.
The accident shut down filming for a few weeks with the cast reassembling in India early last year to complete final scenes.
The producers were also forced to go to court in April to extricate the movie from a legal mess following the collapse of the film empire of disgraced mogul, Harvey Weinstein, who was the distributor.
Only last month producers sealed a deal with the Weinstein Co. to reclaim the film from the assets of the bankruptcy, freeing it for sale to another distributor.
Patel and Cobham-Hervey met on set and have been a couple since, although their attendance at the Adelaide premiere, has not been confirmed.