{"id":24624,"date":"2019-09-05T19:21:08","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T23:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=24624"},"modified":"2019-09-12T17:21:47","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T21:21:47","slug":"sweetness-in-the-belly-brought-to-life-at-tiff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/sweetness-in-the-belly-brought-to-life-at-tiff\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweetness in the Belly brought to life at TIFF"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the course of this year, Aurora readers have come to\nknow Lilly and Aziz, the central lovers in Camilla Gibb\u2019s bestselling novel\nSweetness in the Belly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Aurora Public Library\u2019s selection for the 2019 One\nBook One Aurora Campaign, which aims to have the whole community reading from\nthe same book and passing copies from one to another, this vivid depiction of\nan English-born orphan living andworking in Ethiopia during the final years of\nHaile Selassie\u2019s reign and falling in love with an idealistic young doctor has\ncaptivated many readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Saturday, however, the story will reach a whole new\naudience when the film adaptation of the novel has its world premiere at the\nToronto International Film Festival (TIFF).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starring Dakota Fanning (Once Upon a Time\u2026in America) and\nYahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman), the film was shot on location in Ethiopia. Ms.\nGibb had a chance to see parts of the film being made at the very locations\nwhich helped inspire the story. Having recently seen a rough cut of the film,\nshe was tremendously moved by how director Zeresenay Berhane Mehari interpreted\nher story, and she is eager to see the finished product along with the rest of\nthe audience this weekend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is tremendously exciting,\u201d Ms. Gibb tells The\nAuroran. \u201cI hope the world is kind to my child! I am kind of amazed you can\ntake such a big, sprawling book and make a movie out of it. Obviously you can\u2019t\nbring everything from the book into the movie, but I think they have really\ncaptured the essence, the spirit, the mood of it \u2013 and the sadness of it, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt just feels so close to me in so many ways I can\u2019t\nreally be objective about it. I hope the world is kind and receives it in the\nspirit in which it has been created. It sounds hokey, but there has been a\ntremendous amount of love for this project, and it does feel like a labour of\nlove on the part of everyone involved. It is not easy to go to Ethiopia and\nmake a feature film, but they did it and it is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also a labour of love that has been a long time in\nthe making. Film producers first bought the rights to Ms. Gibb\u2019s book more than\nten years ago. The interested parties, she said, shared they related very personally\nto the story and offered a \u201cvery personal appeal\u201d for the rights, sharing\ninsights from their own lives and why the story resonated so much with them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was one of those times when I realised that this is\na much more universal story than, perhaps, I even knew at the time,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until she read the final script, however, she wasn\u2019t sure\nwhat would ultimately be at the heart of the cinematic version of her story. In\nthe end, however, the love story is its beating heart, along with the questions\nit raises about where we, as a people, belong in the world, \u201cespecially in a\nworld where there is so much dislocation and separation \u2013 where do we truly\nbelong and how can we build a sense of belonging for ourselves in a new place\nthat we have just arrived, that we didn\u2019t necessarily arrive at by choice?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She saw this heart beating when she visited the set last\nfall. She was in \u201cawe\u201d of the whole process, particularly by how Fanning and\nAbdul-Mateen captured the spirit of her characters, and how the behind-the-scenes\ncrew worked tirelessly to capture the perfect looks to bring them to life. By\nher own admission, how a character looks in a story is often secondary in Ms.\nGibb\u2019s creative process, but what they accomplished in the film perfectly hit\nthe mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was really interested in knowing what the work meant\nto the actors and what the story meant to actors,\u201d she says. \u201cI talked to\nAbdul-Mateen and I don\u2019t want to put words in his mouth, but it was the first\ntime he had been to Africa. He\u2019s from New Orleans, he\u2019s a Muslim, his family\nconverted, and it really meant something for him to come to Africa, come to a\nMuslim community in Africa and see a story that was originating from this\nplace, that was going to be broadcast to the world and be a part of that. It\nreally meant something to him and I was touched he had a personal investment in\nthe story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey have done something beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on One Book One Aurora 2019,\nincluding where in the community to find your own copy of Sweetness in the\nBelly to borrow and pass on, visit onebookoneaurora.com or visit the Aurora\nPublic Library.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Film adaptation of One Book One Aurora 2019 selection by Canadian author Camilla Gibb makes its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/2019-09-05-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6pa","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 11:25:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}