FilmFestivals.com - Cannes 2000

Africa is truly blessed, unspoiled and intriguing," says director Hugh Hudson of the setting for his latest movie. "But it is also harsh and wild. Despite the beauty. It isn't paradise. You curse it, but it draws you back if you are strong enough." Luckily, Hudson has the requisite mettle. Having joined the film industry in 1962, he worked on a series of acclaimed documentaries and TV commercials before he made his directorial debut in 1982 with the Oscar-winning Chariots Of Fire. But this benchmark for British filmmaking was soon replaced in the public's memory by Hudson's 1985 American Civil War drama Revolution, which quickly became a byword for financial imprudence and gross over-indulgence.

Hudson's reputation suffered somewhat as a result, but he seems in no hurry to rush back to big, bombastic film-making. His latest project is the true-life story of Kuki Gallman, an Italian woman who felt so dissatisfied with her normal life that she made the decision to move to a more mysterious and exotic continent. Her preconceptions of a rural idyll were quickly dispelled, but Kuki persisted against all odds storms, wild animals, poachers and took African life exactly as she found it.

"Kuki Gallman's story is a wonderful, true, courageous life journey," says star Kim Basinger, who plays her. "After reading the book, I was compelled to put my fears aside and follow her." Which she did, facing many of the same setbacks and woes that faced the real Kuki Gallman, which is quite something for a Hollywood movie star. "Had you told me that ever in my life I would wrestle a 13-foot python," she recalls, "I'd have said you were insane..."

Steve Grayson