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Natalie Portman to adapt Amos Oz

Possibly encouraged by Sarah Polley’s Academy Award-nominated Alice Munro adaptation Away from Her, fellow starlet Natalie Portman has decided to helm her own classy literary adaptation, in this case of a work by Israeli author Amos Oz.

According to The Jerusalem Post:

Natalie Portman reveals in the March issue of W magazine that she’ll make her directorial debut with A Tale of Love and Darkness, bringing to the big screen Amos Oz’s memoir about growing up in 1940s and Fifties Jerusalem. Portman told the fashion magazine that she plans to preserve the language of the memoir by directing the film in Hebrew. “I’ve been reading Oz since high school, and when I read his biography I just sort of saw it,” the actress said.

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In addition to being fluent in Hebrew, Portman is described in the W profile as “proficient in French” and able to speak “some Arabic, thanks to several graduate-level courses at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.” The 26-year-old Harvard graduate studied at the Israeli university in the fall of 2004 before filming Free Zone, a prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival shot in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

Just to clarify that last statement, Portman only starred in Free Zone – the movie was directed by Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai. (And it was boring as dirt, but that’s neither here nor there.)