CAIRO: Mega Hollywood stars Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal started shooting New Line Cinema s production Renditions, a thriller about the practices of the Egyptian secret police this month. According to TotalFilm.com, the film revolves around a CIA analyst (Gyllenhaal) who witnesses the radical interrogation of an Egyptian-American by the Egyptian secret police. Together with the man s pregnant wife (Witherspoon), they embark on a journey to save their lives. The film is directed by the South African filmmaker Gavin Hood, who recently won this year s Oscar for best foreign film, and written by Kelly Sane, a little known script writer who wrote and directed a modest, little-seen musical called Franchesca Page in 1997. The film is set to be shot in Washington, Los Angeles, Cape Town and Marrakech. It s the first Hollywood film set in modern Egypt and the first non-Egyptian film to discuss such a controversial local subject. The Ministry of Culture hasn t made any official statements concerning the film yet and it s still unknown whether New Line attempted to obtain permission to shoot the film in Egypt. American and other international production companies have in years past shunned shooting their films in Egypt due to the unreasonably escalating production costs and a crippling bureaucracy.
