MUMBAI: Salman Rushdie‘s international best-selling novel ‘Midnight ‘s Children‘ is being made into an English film by Oscar-nominee Deepa Mehta.

Renamed Winds of Change, the film stars Irrfan Khan, Rahul Bose, Nandita Das, Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas and Soha Ali Khan among others.

Midnight‘s Children depicts the incidents before and after the Independence and the partition of India through the eyes of its protagonist Saleem Sinai, whose birthday coincides with the birth of Independent India on 15 August 1947. 

The film is being shot in Sri Lanka because Mehta had sworn off India following her nightmare experience shooting Water at Varanasi. The film was subsequently shot in Sri Lanka.

But shooting in the country could yet run into problems because in the late 1990s, the BBC‘s plan to film a five-part mini-series of the novel with Rahul Bose in the lead ran into trouble due to pressure from the Muslim community in the country. Subsequently, the filming permit was revoked and the project was stalled.

The film‘s shooting is due to start in Sri Lanka next month.