Here’s a blurb from Entertainment Weekly about my filmmaker friends.

And the award for Most Unlikely Announcement the Week goes to Colin Firth (Love, Actually) and Livia Giuggioli-Firth. The married couple are producing In Prison My Whole Life, a feature documentary about a young white British man named William Francome with an unusual connection to controversial death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. ”He was born on the day that [Philadelphia police] officer Daniel Faulkner was shot,” explains Firth, ”[which is] the crime for which Mumia was condemned [to death]. Francome’s [American] mother, being something of an activist, made him aware of this all his life. Every birthday has marked the incarceration of this man on the other side of the world across this huge cultural distance. It’s connected him with something that would otherwise be very, very far away.” 

Firth, who only learned of the Abu-Jamal case after his wife introduced him to Francome, is working with director Marc Evans (My Little Eye, Snow Cake) to follow Francome’s exploration of the case and its place in the development of African-American culture and political awareness over the last quarter-century. ”We’re not really taking a position of who is innocent or not of that crime,” says Firth (who is nonetheless firmly against the death penalty), ”but more the fact that Mumia himself has become such a catalyst for political passion on both sides of the argument.” Firth and Giuggioli-Firth plan to have the film completed in time to screen at next year’s Cannes Film Festival.