New Delhi- Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur will direct a short film British director Anthony Minghella had planned to make before his death in London last week. Kapur, who directed Elizabeth and its sequel The Golden Age, will direct a segment of the episodic film New York - I Love You that Minghella had written.
"I will direct the film with Anthony in my heart and in the presence of his soul," Kapur wrote on his website.
Minghella, the Oscar-winning director of the The English Patient had written the film and was planning to begin shooting the film in Manhattan next month.
Kapur said Minghella had asked him personally to direct the film, days before he went in for surgery for cancer of the tonsils and neck.
The 54-year-old widely respected screenwriter, director and actor died of a "fatal haemorrhage" in a London hospital on March 18 following the operation.
"He told me his film was about the value of life, and how people sometimes just throw away their lives unable to look beyond into the real beauty of it," Kapur wrote on the blog.
"Anthony was completely alert and aware of his own mortality at this time, and as long as I had known him, he had valued life in a creative and compassionate way," he said.
Other directors attached to the film include India's Mira Nair, Brett Ratner, Woody Allen and Zach Braff.
Actress Scarlett Johansson is also making her directorial debut and is in the line-up of 12 directors making five-minute films, each on the "universal theme of encountering love."
