Exit Hana.

Vanessa Paradis, Johnny Depps wife, Shifra?

Oh how can I have been so dense, so slow, so trapped in another persons idea ?

The reason I can't get Hana's log line is because the film isn't about Hana!!!

It was my writing coach Charlie's idea to change the main character. I've been hurtling off on this tangent for months. It's been fascinating, yes. But NO MORE.

Charlie's idea was that the movie was all about the Jewish grandmothers desperate need for atonement. He was extremely convincing about this. Then up popped the whole Jewish angle. I discovered parts of my own rich Jewish ancestry.

But my idea was, and is again, that the story which I traveled to Patagonia to find, is all about healing unimaginable loss. It's about healing the terrible wound of losing a child.
That's completely different.

Well, I've learned many things as a result of this re route, and a few dreams have faded along the way:

The French/Bolivian co production idea is now defunct. I just discovered Bolivia makes only one film a year !!!
Is this true?
If not true, it certainly isn't a thriving industry like Mexico's.

Could I set the story in Mexico?
Could I have links/ color refs/ sketchbook refs, to Freida ?

Is there any link I can use with my young friend, the deeply in love Leander, and her Peruvian artist boyfriend who is on the brink of making it in the International Art World ?

My film story is back to being all about Shifra. It's core is how she recovers from the abduction of her baby. How she recovers her will to live though drawing her feelings and thoughts in her extraordinary sketchbooks, just like her mother and grandmother did in different circumstances in Auschwitz. Shifra's new life starts when she decides to accept the clairvoyants prediction that she won't find her baby Samira in Paris, but Samira will find her in South America when she's 18. So she emigrates, but with many reservation.

In pitching this story to date, this 'taster' has been a great emotional hook. Then I lost that hook when Shifra steeped into the wings, and Hana came center stage.

Hana is in the background of the story now, painting and dipping in and out of her bi polar states., ie she is either the life and soul of the Parisian arts/ social scene, or in the pits.

Her Holocaust past needn't be the big drama now.
That feels like a relief.

Emma Thomson as Hana ?

I feel a huge excitement. It's like seeing a rainbow at dawn. I want to tell the whole world how inspiring this story will be.

Back to the drawing board:

Hana's off the hook. I'm off the hook. Charlie's definitely off the hook, and out of the picture.

So, here's what's happening.

A helicopter view:
Beside Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, we meet Shifra struggling to deal with her desperate feelings of sadness and loss and 1000 what if's. She's drawing the name Samira on the sandy beach with a long stick.

Next view:
La Paz, chaotic, crowded, colorful, close to the famous Witches Market, we see Shifra teaching street kids acrobatics and juggling with her Bolivian graffiti artist boyfriend.

Shifra's agonizingly trying to find meaning in her new life. Working with the street kids helps. Every night she pours her tortured feelings about Samira into her sketchbooks, and when she has time, she paints hauntingly beautiful Chagall-like images of disappearing children. Gerome ( to be re named), her Bolivian boyfriend, is loving, but vague. He has a tendency to smoke lots of dope. He doesn't say much. They have a language barrier. He's an ambitious and talented graffiti artist. His one real flaw is that he's competitive and secretly jealous of Shifra's great talent. Shifra hungers to succeed in the art world in order to earn enough money to pay a private detective in France to find for Samira. Hana has disinherited Shifra long ago. Shifra cannot wait for the clairvoyants prediction to materialize. Her great flaw is impatience.


Visually the story is fascinating. To begin with we see Shifra teaching the street kids wonderful acrobatics with hoops and ribbons and drumming.. she's mega talented.. in the evening she draws and paints ....she writes letters to galleries... opens rejection letters... battles with begging her estranged and heartless mum for financial help...

Could Julie Christie be Hana? No. Maybe?

The story needs to start with setting the scene in France, then the abduction in Paris.. then the meeting with Bolivian Gerome, followed by the meeting with the clairvoyant... followed by the move to... where... Bolivia...or Mexico ?

I got my story back !

How could I have been so slow, so bewitched for so many months, by Charlie's idea?

My personalty flaw ?
The need for encouragement and approval from my writing peers.