Besson Sees the ‘Light’; Michelle Yeoh to Play Aung San Suu Kyi

Now that she is no longer under house arrest, this is one film premiere that Aung San Suu Kyi will likely not miss out on. The Nobel Peace Prize winner will see herself played on the big screen and I imagine she might even collaborate on some level with Luc Besson who’ll be employing the services of Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh (much liked among French directors having recently worked for Mathieu Kassovitz’s Babylon A.D.) to play her in the biopic. Dans la Lumière will commence filming next year.

Gist: Directly from Wiki: the Burmese opposition politician and a former General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from July 20, 1989 until her release on 13 November 2010. Aung San Suu Kyi is the third child and only daughter of Aung San, considered to be the father of modern-day Burma.

Worth Noting: Besson is not the only other Frenchman that had wanted to adapt the biopic – Marion Cotillard told us in an interview that out of all people she would have loved to portray her — “each time I hear that question the first name that comes to my mind is someone I can’t do because it’s Aung San Suu Kyi. For obvious and emotional reasons I can’t. But I think a movie has to be done.”

Do We Care?: We haven’t cared about a Luc Besson related product since the late 90’s The Fifth Element and Joan of Arc – so put us down for interested in the “subject”.