British producer Kent Walwin attempts a film on Christ’s journey to enlightenment, through India

Films on the Lord tend to be controversial, ask Mel Gibson who made The Passion of the Christ or Martin Scorsese who directed The Last Temptation of Christ, but veteran British film producer Kent Walwin is quietly confident about his ambitious film on Jesus. His movie, Young Jesus: The Missing Years, he says, will fill the gaps in Christ’s story. “My film is about his journey and his enlightenment, unlike Gibson’s film that focussed on the Crucifixion,” says Walwin at The Oberoi, Delhi.

Though there is little historical evidence to prove it, there has been a theory that Jesus lived in India during the “lost years”, the undocumented timespan of 18 years in Jesus’s life in the New Testament. Walwin’s film takes the line that Christ was in India to learn Buddhism. The film is currently in the pre-production phase, with the script still being finalised in London, and Walwin and his team scouting for locations in India. The film, to be released in 2011, will be in 3-D. “It is a more emotional and interactive movie-viewing experience,” says Walwin, who was conferred this year’s Dayawati Modi Award for Art, Culture and Education, instituted by the Modi Group of industries. A veteran of over a dozen Hollywood projects, Walwin has worked as producer and executive producer for movies like A Handful of Dust (1988) starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) starring Helen Mirren.

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