As previously mentioned, Freida Pinto, is currently back in India. She missed the world premiere of  Miral at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday night as she had to return home for an emergency. Here’s what her spokesperson had to say about it.

“Yes, Freida has come to attend to a personal matter. But she will attend the screening of the film at the Toronto film festival, which is later this month.”

I hope everything is okay with the Pinto family, and you can be sure that Freida Pinto Fan will cover the Toronto International Film Festival with info, photos, videos and more!

There’s a brand new look at the Freida Pinto Forum! I have also deleted tons of spambots that were registered. To make it harder for them to register and start attacking the boards again I have now decided to manually approve all members. Hopefully this will help. Feel free to head on over the the forum and register your account for free today!

In the news-bar at the forum (at the top) you will see when we approved members. If you still haven’t got a message saying you got approved, enter your details again as you might have been mistaken for a spambot (choose a “normal” username to make sure you won’t be!). I’m looking forward to getting to know more Freida-fans. See you there!

The world premiere of Miral was held yesterday at the Venice International Film Festival, and now the first reviews are here! It’s been given mixed-to-poor reviews by the US critics, saying that it doesn’t quite live up the high expectations everyone had after Julian Schnabel’s last movie The Diving Belle and the Butterfly. I’ve featured some of the reviews below.

Remember, these are only a first look at reviews for Miral, I will make another post of reviews where top industry critics are included closer to the release date.

While any film addressing the Israeli-Palestinian divide can expect a measure of controversy, few hearts or minds are likely to be stirred by Julian Schnabel’s inoffensive, well-intentioned “Miral.” Schnabel’s signature blend of splintered storytelling and sobering humanism feels misapplied to this sweeping multigenerational saga of four Arab women living under Israeli occupation, the youngest of which, Miral, emerges a bland totem of hope rather than a compelling movie subject. A year-end Stateside release date will raise expectations unlikely to be borne out by either passionate critical response or sustained arthouse biz.
[...]
Bound to raise perhaps the most criticism is the casting of Pinto, the Indian actress-model who came to fame in “Slumdog Millionaire,” in the role of an Arab Everygirl — an odd choice for a drama predicated on specifics of cultural identity. While Pinto looks appropriately willful, driven and occasionally fierce as Miral clashes with her loving guardians (and is later whipped in prison for her suspected terrorist involvement), neither she nor the material convincingly demonstrates why, of the countless stories that have been told about the conflict, this one was worth singling out.

• Justin Chang, Variety

Some of the dialogue in Miral is portentous in the extreme. Characters deliver lines like “this is a very crucial moment for our country – our people can’t take it any more” rather than speaking in anything that remotely resembles normal speech. There are distracting cameos from stars like Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe, who are on screen for a few moments and then disconcertingly disappear from the story without trace. Schnabel is covering three generations but his storytelling style is more cumbersome than nimble. At its most leaden, this is more like a school lecture in Middle Eastern history than it is a piece of drama. Newsreel footage is thrown into the mix in heavy-handed fashion and characters – as they age – suddenly go very grey. Quiet domestic scenes and climactic political moments are juxtaposed in seemingly random manner. Even so, it’s hard not to root for Husseini (played with great dignity by Abbass) as she tries to educate the orphan kids and thereby save them from a rootless existence in the refugee camps. Miral herself is played very engagingly by Freida Pinto as a mischievous and idealistic teenager with an acute sense of natural justice.

• Geoffrey Macnab, The Independent

(continue reading…)

According to Italian site MyMovies.it, Freida Pinto had to cancel her attendance at the Venice Film Festival last-minute. She was expected to attend the world premiere of Miral tonight, but an emergency caused her to return to India instead. We wish all the best to Freida and her family, and hope that everything is all right at home.

Freida Pinto Fan will still report from Venice with updates on how the movie’s being received by audiences and critics. Stay tuned for that!

Another Italian magazine alert! Freida Pinto’s also featured in a very special Venice Film Festival-supplement to L’Uomo Vogue’s September issue. She talks about Miral, which is premiering tonight at the festival! Not only is it a new interview, but a new picture as well. She looks gorgeous (though a little unrecognizable) in it, as seen in the preview above. Click on it to see her feature in a slightly bigger size. Thanks to Emmanuelle for the heads up!

If you have the magazine, I’d really appreciate scans or a translation of the interview. Simply e-mail me at freidapintofan.com@gmail.com and you will be given full credit for your help.

The actress reveals how she attained her most challenging role yet, in Miral.

For Miral Schnabel was looking for a Palestinian protagonist. “The casting had already started, but Danny Boyle was good enough to personally direct my video for the audition. The script moved me in an inexpressible way: to a certain degree the story narrated is very similar to what happened when India and Pakistan were divided up. I wanted the role at all costs. I don’t know why Schnabel chose me; I can only say that when I did the audition I so identified with the role that I put all of myself into it.

At a certain point I had to say how much I loved my father: at the end Julian commented: “You really must love your father”. I think my total support for the character convinced him. And I have the feeling that looking a little like Rula Jebreal helped matters too”.

Freida Pinto’s currently featured in the September issue of the Italian version of Grazia magazine. It’s a brand-new article, where she talks about her new movie Miral, walking the red carpet and dating Dev Patel. It’s a very interesting read so be sure to check it out. For those of you who don’t understand Italian, here’s the Google Translate-version of the interview. Enjoy!

As you frequent visitors might see, we’ve got a brand new look here at Freida Pinto Fan! The previous layout had been up for a long time (read too long) and with all the things happening in September I felt it was time for something new. So I created this fall-look for the site, featuring a gorgeous photo from a photoshoot Freida did for Glamour (UK) back in 2009.

Not only have I worked on a new layout; the biography as well as the entire filmography have been updated with lots of new information (please report broken links, etc). More new things are yet to come (including a new layout for the gallery) so stay tuned. I also want to let you know that the site can be entered via www.freida-pinto.com (very easy to remember, right?) now as well!

I really hope you all will like the changes. Please drop a comment with your opinion before you leave. Thanks!

As promised, I have now replaced the old scans from the September issue of In Style with hi-res ones that I personally scanned for Freida Pinto Fan. Miss Pinto looks absolutely stunning in these photos, and even better in hi-res. ;) Simply click on the preview above to check out the new versions. Enjoy!

Freida Pinto, Tahar Rahim, Mark Strong and Antonio Banderas are all in discussions to join Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1929-set romantic drama epic set against the rise of the oil industry in the Middle East reports The Daily Mail.

Hans R. Ruesch’s 1957 novel South Of The Heart, a fictionalised take on the formation of Saudi Arabia, will form the basis of the story about a well-educated Arab prince who is married to a beautiful princess and “is confronted with the problem of what the discovery of oil will bring to the Bedouins” says producer Tarak Ben Ammar.

Rahim and Pinto would play the prince and princess in the film, described as a “big romantic story about oil, religion, tribes and tradition”. Shooting will take place in Tunisia.

The official guest list for the 35th Toronto International Film Festival (running September 9-19) has been published; and Freida Pinto is on it! While this doesn’t come as a surprise to us (both Miral and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger are being screened, after all) it’s nice to have it confirmed. This means tons of new things for us fans, and you can be sure Freida Pinto Fan will provide you with photos, videos and more throughout the festival.

Fingers crossed that Freida will attend the world premiere of Miral at the Venice Film Festival on September 2, as well!