‘Banker to the Poor’, the autobiography of Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus is being adapted to an English language feature film. According to a press release on Variety.com, the film will be developed by Marco Amenta, an Italian director, photographer and producer and is scheduled to begin shoot early 2010 in Bangladesh, the country where Dr. Yunus founded the Nobel Peace Prize winning microfinance institution (MFI) Grameen Bank. Rome-based production house, Eurofilm has purchased rights to the book from Editions Lattes, the publisher of the French version of Dr. Yunus’ book. According to the release, Eurofilm is in advanced negotiations to co-produce the movie with international partners including the German based Pandora’s Film. Dr. Yunus will serve as a consultant and will be involved with the approval of the final screenplay of the film.
The screenplay for the movie is co-penned by Mr. Amenta along with Italian screenwriter, Sergio Donati. The estimated budget for the production is USD 6 million so far. Casting for the film is still being finalized but Mr. Amenta has revealed the movie will feature two Indian leads alongside a Western actor and a Bangladeshi actor. No further information on this adaptation is publicly available as of now.
Banker to the Poor is Dr. Yunus’ memoir of how he decided to change his life in order to help the world’s poor. He traces the intellectual and spiritual journey that led him to fundamentally rethink the economic relationship between the rich and the poor, and the challenges he and his colleagues faced in founding the Grameen organization. Stating that ‘access to credit must be a central part of any serious attack on poverty’, Dr. Yunus, through his book, provides guidance for people interested to join him in ‘putting homelessness and destitution in a museum’.
Dr. Yunus was born in 1940 in Chittagong, a seaport in Bangladesh. He was educated at Dhaka University and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study economics at the Vanderbilt University in the US. In 1972, he became the head of the economics department at Chittagong University. He founded the Grameen Bank in 1976 which was later incorporated as a for-profit specialized bank for the poor in 1983. Dr. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. MicroCapital has extensively covered Professor Yunus’ work with the Grameen Bank and his other initiatives; please click here for a list of all our past stories on Dr. Yunus.
By Bharathi Ram, Research Assistant
Additional Resources:
Variety.com: Amenta puts money on ‘Banker’
Banker to the Poor
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